> That's arbitrary and quite unproductive convo to be honest.

Yeah but that’s what the legal system ostensibly does. Splitting fine hairs over whether a derived work is “transformative” is something lawyers and judges have been arguing and deciding for centuries. Just because it’s hard to define a bright red line, doesn’t mean the decision is arbitrary. Courts will mull over whether a dotted quarter note on the fourth bar of a melody constitutes an independent work all day long. It seems absurd, but deciding blurry lines are what courts are built to handle.

I see lawyers come here time and again, and it's very nice to see their points. But are we lawyers here? I'm not. If you are sorry about that, but if not my point stands.

Because at the end of the day, someone has to own the code, so some lines have to be drawn no matter how arbitrary they seem.