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Is it even legal to take a GPL-licensed code, translating to Rust ensuring it is exactly compatible, and then releasing under non-GPL? I thought you would need
by david_draco 3y ago
Is it even legal to take a GPL-licensed code, translating to Rust ensuring it is exactly compatible, and then releasing under non-GPL? I thought you would need to extract a clean-room specification from it first, and ideally have separate people extracting the specification and writing the new code.
- krylon 3y agoYou can use the man pages as your reference. Another comment also mentioned a test suite. I think using that to check how equivalent your attempt is does not violate the GPL.
- Y_Y 3y agoI had the same thought. This very much feels like a derived work. Since they (aim to) replicate the behaviour if the gnutils, and not just some generic posix utiles then I think it would be hard to argue the GPL doesn't apply in a legal sense. I think in a moral sense it very much is a violation, since the GNU authors presumably intended for their work to be built on only by further copyleft works.