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A comment on Gonix – Unix tools written in Go. Parent comment

Re:Gonix – Unix tools written in Go by cloverich on Saturday May 09, 2015 @10:35AM (#9516469)
That re-write lists its license as MIT, not GPLv2. Is that legitimate? e.g. in general, can you re-implement a library with one license and change it to a non-compatible license?
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Re:Gonix – Unix tools written in Go by lorddoig on Saturday May 09, 2015 @11:40AM (#9516680)
From everything I've read I'm pretty sure that if it's a complete rewrite in another language then it's legally "divorced" from the original project. You can own (and ergo license) an implementation of an idea, but you can't own or license the idea itself. Same with patents - you own the how, not the why.
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