That's interesting, comparing it to plagiarism, reminds me of when I was shamed when I was like 8 for rewriting a paragraph from a book in my own words for an essay. At least when I was that age, that was totally considered plagiarism (at least by my parents). It was crushing to find that even though I'd worked really hard on paraphrasing each sentence, it didn't count and I'd missed the whole point.
I wonder what standards colleges and research journals have now.
Also seems that copyright regarding code and the whole world of copyleft is still a grey area in the courts.