this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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Programming

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Grit: rewriting Git in Rust with agents (blog.gitbutler.com)
submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@literature.cafe to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

rewrite by llm to workaround GPL

iirc someone started a company doing just that.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

..and they deserve eternal damnation for the idea, IMO. Hrrmph. LLMs by definition can only make derivative works. That's what they do, draw from their training on other works by humans. They are nothing without the training data. Data which was scraped from the entire f*cking Internet, without anyone's permissions. Why is this so hard for devs to understand?

Yes, I am grumpy about this.

[–] Solemarc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 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?

If I go and build my own implimentation of GTK, how do I even prove that I made it entirely without looking at GTK because that's what's required to relicense right?

Solely from the fact that I'm telling you I made my own implementation of GTK, I'm admitting It's not clean room right?

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 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.

[–] Solemarc@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours 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?

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours 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.