alt Hacker NewsThat's interesting, but it misses my point:
The library's test suite and interfaces were apparently used directly, not transformed. If either of those are considered part of the library's source code, as the license's wording seems to suggest, then I think output from their use could be considered a work based on the library as defined in the license.
Replies
GardenLetter27 • yesterday at 10:40 PM
But the tests were transformed to the new language, they are not copied as-is.
Software patents would work as you describe, but not copyright.
Legally that's been established as acceptable.
Google LLC v Oracle America assumed (though didn't establish) that API's are copyrightable... BUT that developing against them falls under fair use, as long as the function implementations are independent.
Test suites are again generally considered copyrightable... but the behavior being tested is not.
So no, it's not considered to be a work based on the library. This seems pretty clear-cut in US law by now.
Also, the LGPL text doesn't say "work based on the library". It says "If you modify a copy of the Library", and this is not a "combined work" either. And the whole point is that this is not a modified copy -- it's a reimplementation.
In theory, a license could be written to prevent running its tests from being run against software not derived from the original, i.e. clean-room reimplementations. In practice, it remains dubious whether any court would uphold that. And it would also be trivial to then get around it, by taking advantage of fair use to re-implement the tests in e.g. plain English (or any specification language), and then re-implementing those back into new test code. Because again, test behaviors are not copyrightable.