Interesting how differently how one can view things.
I'd say, emulators are the easiest to defend. First and foremost, they emulated something which existed before. And the fact that there are different hardware and software emulations, several of them completely different to one another internally, proves that the program does not the intimate details of execution. Also, I read somewhere that especially if something existed before is a big difference when judging a GPL program. If a GPL program clones a previously existing behaviour, how can you with a straight face say an aggregate is derivative?
(Of course, there can be other things like GUI integration which muddies things up.)
I'd say, emulators are the easiest to defend. First and foremost, they emulated something which existed before. And the fact that there are different hardware and software emulations, several of them completely different to one another internally, proves that the program does not the intimate details of execution. Also, I read somewhere that especially if something existed before is a big difference when judging a GPL program. If a GPL program clones a previously existing behaviour, how can you with a straight face say an aggregate is derivative?
(Of course, there can be other things like GUI integration which muddies things up.)