Apparently chardet got Claude to rewrite the entire codebase from LGPL to MIT?

[Guest]

@Foxboron but can it even be considered a "clean-room rewrite" given not only it read the original code but also it has been trained on lots of other GPL code?

I guess that's a very interesting field for some lawyers.

[lynne@mk.pars.ee]

@Foxboron@chaos.social What a horrible way to do it.

[muelli@chaos.social]

@Foxboron @scy you could still have an opinion. Discussing legal matters is not a subject to be discussed exclusively by legal professionals as it affects non professionals, too.

[joshbressers@infosec.exchange]

@Foxboron @scy

I suspect this is different. That case someone trying to copyright something the AI spit out, not asking if AI can violate a copyright by copying something almost verbatim

Of course I haven't looked to see if the chardet code is mostly a copy, if it's not, then

[foxboron@chaos.social]

@muelli @scy
Sure.

But I'm not going to spend time on a strawman disguised as a logic puzzle. That isn't how laws work nor how they are formed.

[foxboron@chaos.social]

@joshbressers @scy

Sure, but we are not really looking at, nor discussing, cases where LLMs spits out something verbatim from another project in this case.

[dekkia@dekkia.com]

@Foxboron Considering that nobody can hold a copyright on AI-generated stuff, and therefore also can't release it under a different license, doesn't that mean this rewrite is basically public domain?

[duckattack@chaos.social]

@Foxboron lol, this is in a way what they suggest in this talk from #fosdem26: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SUVS7G-lets_end_open_source_together_with_this_one_simple_trick/

[foxboron@chaos.social]

@dekkia
Public domain is not really a thing in most of the world. So "yes", for US. For EU it's more complicated.

[hannah@moonserver.yorha.nexus]

@Foxboron@chaos.social "Laundering code" through an LLM...

But:
Since the LLM-generated code cannot be copyrighted in any way, this entire project (or at least the part the LLM generated) is technically public domain.

Oh well. Not like certain entities care for the law! ​​

[dekkia@dekkia.com]

@Foxboron As far as I'm aware here in Germany it technically has copyright, but there's no owner who can enforce it.

I guess complicated is a good word for that.

[aparrish@friend.camp]

@Foxboron @dpk gross

[pixelcode@social.tchncs.de]

@dekkia @Foxboron Not really, a creator (in the copyright sense) can only be a human being, not a machine.

[brie@do.crimes.brie.gay]

@hannah@moonserver.yorha.nexus @Foxboron@chaos.social well, it would be public domain (by current rulings in the US) if the newer version is sufficiently different from the original LGPL to not be covered under that copyright

Very "funny" to license a repo as MIT when it is potentially either LGPL or public domain

[rootwyrm@weird.autos]

@Bubu @Foxboron somebody should inform PSF that in fact, chardet now has NO licensing and cannot be legally copyrighted or trademarked in any jurisdiction.

The Copyright Office’s Latest Guidance on AI and Copyrightability

US Copyright Office reaffirms AI-generated works without human creative input are not eligible for copyright protection. Emphasizes human creativity in AI use

The National Law Review (natlawreview.com)

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zdpxjnmmxpx/USPTO%20AI%20PATENTS%20squires.pdf

[revk@toot.me.uk]

@Foxboron But AI written is not copyright, so does licence now matter on that code?

[wronglang@bayes.club]

@Foxboron somebody should do this with the leaked Windows source code

[foxboron@chaos.social]

@wronglang
That would probably not be litigated under copyright law.

[wronglang@bayes.club]

@mgorny @Foxboron

That's beautiful

[hannah@moonserver.yorha.nexus]

@brie@do.crimes.brie.gay @Foxboron@chaos.social Well... ​​
... Fair point! ​​

One could argue that a rewrite is something different or the same... depending on how one wants to play it. This one would argue that it is actually something new because the underlying technology has changed to a significant degree (as far as this one is aware... but it is not a lawyer obviously).