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Is this discussion about bdsutils? Why do you dismiss the whole legal discussion as 'unsubstantiated remarks'? It is certainly a valid issue for a non-GPL rewri

Is this discussion about bdsutils? Why do you dismiss the whole legal discussion as 'unsubstantiated remarks'? It is certainly a valid issue for a non-GPL rewrite of a GPL software.

Aissen 3y ago
I dismiss it because I haven't seen substantiated remarks; i.e proof that anyone actually looked at the source of coreutils to do the the reimplementation.
- pama 3y ago
  Nobody has to look at the code to violate the GPL though. An acccidental identical implementation or one spewed out by an LLM counts as a simple translation would largely place the new code under GPL at a technical level. I don’t see the point really for not simply adding rust to enhance a fork of gnu binutils, except for the license change, and the license change is super hard to defend in the long term future when it will be easy to identify translations of the original code.
  - Aissen 3y ago
    > Nobody has to look at the code to violate the GPL though Accidental identical implementation of something trivial aren't covered by copyright, see the Oracle vs Google lawsuit. LLM completions are something else entirely.
    - pama 3y ago
      Agreed on the accidental reimplementation of something trivial. The distinction of what is trivial will be harder to clarify in the future, however the language models in the future can also help identify the provenance of substantial parts of the code and eventually it will be easier for GNU, if they care, to have a strong argument. I suspect GNU will not care until somebody plays foul, so GNU can wait for a long time until that happens and until the tools are substantially better. I just find it a little sad that the effort is bifurcated into competing camps. Maybe eventually gnu binutils will also start a rust clone for parts of their binutils and make this effort obsolete at the technical level.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    GPL is based on copyright law. Independent creation is a defense against copyright infringement under US copyright law. (How could it not be?)

Is this discussion about bdsutils? Why do you dismiss the whole legal discussion as 'unsubstantiated remarks'? It is certainly a valid issue for a non-GPL rewrite of a GPL software.

Aissen 3y ago

I dismiss it because I haven't seen substantiated remarks; i.e proof that anyone actually looked at the source of coreutils to do the the reimplementation.

pama 3y ago
Nobody has to look at the code to violate the GPL though. An acccidental identical implementation or one spewed out by an LLM counts as a simple translation would largely place the new code under GPL at a technical level. I don’t see the point really for not simply adding rust to enhance a fork of gnu binutils, except for the license change, and the license change is super hard to defend in the long term future when it will be easy to identify translations of the original code.
- Aissen 3y ago
  > Nobody has to look at the code to violate the GPL though Accidental identical implementation of something trivial aren't covered by copyright, see the Oracle vs Google lawsuit. LLM completions are something else entirely.
  - pama 3y ago
    Agreed on the accidental reimplementation of something trivial. The distinction of what is trivial will be harder to clarify in the future, however the language models in the future can also help identify the provenance of substantial parts of the code and eventually it will be easier for GNU, if they care, to have a strong argument. I suspect GNU will not care until somebody plays foul, so GNU can wait for a long time until that happens and until the tools are substantially better. I just find it a little sad that the effort is bifurcated into competing camps. Maybe eventually gnu binutils will also start a rust clone for parts of their binutils and make this effort obsolete at the technical level.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  GPL is based on copyright law. Independent creation is a defense against copyright infringement under US copyright law. (How could it not be?)