If a software developer learns how to code better by reading GPL software and then later uses the skills they developed to build closed source for profit software should they be sued?
The extra steps aren't enough to exhonorate them. It's just a convoluted copy operation.
Is just like how a lossy encoding of a song is still - with respect to copyright - a copy of that song. The data is totally different, and some of the original is missing. It's still a derivative work. So is a remix. So is a reperformance.