I think some of us may be missing the point about language
identification.
It's not a _technical_ question, it's a _legal_ one.
Apple's lawyers have available to them exactly the kind of instrument
they expect (as lawyers) to have: legal testimony. If you sign up to
the
new rules, you are entering into a contract, and whether Apple
_engineers_ can tell what you originally wrong in or not, if Apple's
_lawyers_ are called in, you will find yourself answering:
Q: Well, Mr/Ms/Dr/ Developer, did you personally write
any of the code in this program?
A: Yes.
Q: And did you write it directly in one of the programming
languages allowed in the contract, or did you use some
other programming language?
A: The code that was checked into the repository was in
C and had never been in any other known programming
language, but it was actually generated from a table of
player descriptions using a little AWK script.
Q: So what you are saying is that you knowingly violated
the terms of the contract?
Given the code generation and refactoring capabilities of things
like NetBeans and Eclipse, notions of "written" and "originally" are
getting even fuzzier than they always were, which is saying
something. If this ever gets to court, we may have a criterion
imposed on us, possibly one as silly as the distinction between
programs and algorithms said to be made in patent-land.
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