It all depends on how much of the code is reproduced, and how identical it is to the original.
If you looked at confidential source code, say the files that implemented Windows scheduler. And then just wrote the exact same thing in another file, manually typing it out letter by letter. Then is the latter your own original work? What if you just changed the names of variables and classes? Is that also your original work? What do you think copyright law and the courts would say if you were sued?
Microsoft would 100% sue you in that case. So no, they certainly don't get to steal significant chunks of GPL and similarly licensed code and get to copy it as they wish and spin the result as original work. There is no defense for that.
You assert that this is beneficial for free software, but this is only in a world where copyright isn't legal. Until that's changed, this is still a violation of GPL copyright license.
no subject
If you looked at confidential source code, say the files that implemented Windows scheduler. And then just wrote the exact same thing in another file, manually typing it out letter by letter. Then is the latter your own original work? What if you just changed the names of variables and classes? Is that also your original work? What do you think copyright law and the courts would say if you were sued?
Microsoft would 100% sue you in that case. So no, they certainly don't get to steal significant chunks of GPL and similarly licensed code and get to copy it as they wish and spin the result as original work. There is no defense for that.
You assert that this is beneficial for free software, but this is only in a world where copyright isn't legal. Until that's changed, this is still a violation of GPL copyright license.