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Grit: rewriting Git in Rust with agents (blog.gitbutler.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I feel like rewriting a GPL thing based on the GPL version should require the GPL licence. After all, you've built something on top of GPL code which means it's also GPL right?

No. Not even a little. It's a copyright, not a patent.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I still feel like it should apply, this is the first term of the gpl:

    This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language

    "I rewrote it in another language as a library instead of an exe" is still covered under this term isn't it?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    APIs don't fall under copyright, but implementations do. This is a good thing, otherwise we couldn't have linux or wine, because they used apis from unix and windows respectively, or open source implementations of anything.
    If you look at how another program does something to, you are bound by it's license, but if you only look at what it does you are not.

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