In your view, was writing a BIOS re-implementation from scratch "stealing" from IBM? Are all of the vaguely Unix-compatible operating systems "stealing" from Unix (ATT/Bell)? Why is the "free time" of the original developer more sacrosanct than the "free time" of the re-implementer?
> Why is the "free time" of the original developer more sacrosanct than the "free time" of the re-implementer?
This has nothing to do with free time. It has to do with the fact that the former actually went through a ton of pain to get the project from its original conception and past bugs & design flaws into its current useful state, and the latter is merely translating the solution right in front of them. And not only is the latter going to deprive the former of the ability to even say "this is my project" (despite them having spent years or decades on its design etc.), but they're also probably going to be able to take the whole thing in a different direction, effectively leaving the original author behind.
Whether you feel this is a good or a bad thing for society aside, it should be obvious why this could be genuinely upsetting in some situations.
I happen to like living in a world where Pipewire can just be a drop in replacement for PulseAudio that can implement the same APIs and do everything that PulseAudio does but better. Or where I can play my games on Linux because Valve re-implemented DirectX and all the Windows platform libraries. Or where there are half a dozen "vim" clones to pick from if I want to. If there are broad, tangible benefits to rewriting a piece of software, then it ought to be rewritten, hurt feelings nonwithstanding.
I don't really understand the argument that the original author gets deprived of anything by a piece of free software being rewritten, certainly not credit. Obviously stealing the name would be a dick move and maybe open you up to legal action but that's not really what happens 99.99% of the time.
This is not like that though; moving from a pro-user license to a pro-business license is the reason for being upset, not just losing control over the product.
With the move, any future improvements run the very real risk of being extended then closed off by tech companies.
It's simply hubris for an entire community of developers to look at an existing working product that got popular due to the goal of being pro-user, then say to themselves "we can replace it with this new thing I created, but in order for my new thing to gain traction it must be immediately favourable to big business to close off".
If you view it in that light, then, yeah, you can understand why the upset people are upset, even if you don't agree with them.
> Many of them were upset enough to engage in decade-long lawsuits. But we'd ultimately be in a much worse place if "avoiding making original creators upset" was the primary factor in development, over things like compatibility, bugs, performance, security etc.
Original creators did frequently get upset, but the difference between "some individual forked the code or cloned the product" is very different to "an entire community celebrating a gradual but persistent and constant effort by the same community to move the ecosystem away from a pro-user license".
I hope this gives you some insight into why people are upset, even if you don't agree with them. Most of them aren't articulating it like I did.
[EDIT: I'm thinking of this like an Overton-Window equivalent, shifting from pro-user to pro-business. It seems like an accurate analogy: some people don't want this shift to happen while others are actively pushing for it. This is obviously going to result in conflict.]
Moreover, often these folks have rare expertise in those subjects, and/or rare willingness to work on them as open side projects. If you tell them this is just something they have to deal with, I wouldn't be surprised if you also remove some of the incentives folks have to keep contributing to OSS voluntarily in the first place. Very little money, and massive risk of losing control, recognition, etc. even if you "succeed"... how many people are still going to bother? And then you get shocked, shocked that OSS is losing to proprietary software and dying.
