Quoting Richard Kenner <ken...@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu>:
Unless one can claim "fair use". But the above procedure is also likely to result in taking nothing copyrightable from the original text anyway.
But fair use does not apply here (geographically), and I don't want to have to consult a copyright lawyer to verify if I can safely submit my patch. Plus, even if there was a cheap and quick test to find out if the result is publishable, there is the hazard that you end up with something you can't publish, and it's one more piece of unpublished non-mainline code that makes it more complicated recall what really is in mainline and in the set of submitted-but-not-yet-reviewed patches.
