FWIW, my assumption has been that translation from one programming language to another might not suffice to disconnect the link to the original (GPL'd) work.
But we're off-topic (and hypothetical) by now. Greg Stein wrote on Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 06:31:36 -0400: > On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 11:24, Hyrum K Wright <hy...@hyrumwright.org> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Daniel Shahaf <d...@daniel.shahaf.name> > > wrote: > >> [ Haven't read the whole thread yet, quick response only to this sentence ] > >> > >> Peter Samuelson wrote on Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 10:11:45 -0500: > >>> This is why you should read the existing third-party implementations. > >> > >> I believe some third-party implementations are GPL'd --- meaning that we > >> can't borrow code from them --- so one should be careful in what parts > >> of what implementations one chooses to read. > > > > We certainly can't copy / paste code, but borrowing algorithms, > > techniques, patterns or ideas is perfectly valid. GPL governs > > copyright of the code, not the ideas contained therein. (For > > instance, reimplementing something from a GPL'd Python program to a > > ALv2'd C program would be perfectly valid.) > > > > -Hyrum > > > > PS - IANAL and could be way off base here. If I am, and even > > *reading* GPL code somehow makes you ineligible to contribute to > > ALv2-licensed code, then the GPL is even goofier than I thought. > > > > IMO, your interpretation is quite correct. > > Cheers, > -g
