Dan Blanchard, maintainer of Python's "chardet" library, used Claude to rewrite the entire project's codebase so that he can switch the license from LGPL to MIT.
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Dan Blanchard, maintainer of Python's "chardet" library, used Claude to rewrite the entire project's codebase so that he can switch the license from LGPL to MIT.
chardet 7.0: ground-up MIT-licensed rewrite by dan-blanchard · Pull Request #322 · chardet/chardet
Python character encoding detector. Contribute to chardet/chardet development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub (github.com)
I highly doubt that this is legal, but who the fuck cares these days anyway, right?
If I was a contributor to that project, I'd tell him in no vague words what I think about shit like that. "No bro, it's totally not relicensing your code bro, this is totally new code bro!"
@scy Woah. What a world.
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Dan Blanchard, maintainer of Python's "chardet" library, used Claude to rewrite the entire project's codebase so that he can switch the license from LGPL to MIT.
chardet 7.0: ground-up MIT-licensed rewrite by dan-blanchard · Pull Request #322 · chardet/chardet
Python character encoding detector. Contribute to chardet/chardet development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub (github.com)
I highly doubt that this is legal, but who the fuck cares these days anyway, right?
If I was a contributor to that project, I'd tell him in no vague words what I think about shit like that. "No bro, it's totally not relicensing your code bro, this is totally new code bro!"
@scy Derivative works transformed by AI generate no new copyright--the derivation copyright passes through unchanged from the original. If you tell an AI to rewrite an LGPL library, the result is LGPL with the same rightsholders.
Even with a clean room reimplementation, one could not apply the MIT license, because AI work is unlicensable--anyone can use it however they like, because it's public domain.
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Dan Blanchard, maintainer of Python's "chardet" library, used Claude to rewrite the entire project's codebase so that he can switch the license from LGPL to MIT.
chardet 7.0: ground-up MIT-licensed rewrite by dan-blanchard · Pull Request #322 · chardet/chardet
Python character encoding detector. Contribute to chardet/chardet development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub (github.com)
I highly doubt that this is legal, but who the fuck cares these days anyway, right?
If I was a contributor to that project, I'd tell him in no vague words what I think about shit like that. "No bro, it's totally not relicensing your code bro, this is totally new code bro!"
@scy Anyone with contributions to the LGPL codebase should file takedown requests with whatever repos this is hosted in and with GitHub.
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@NexCarter Da scrollte sogar letztens was an mir vorbei mit irgendnem Chatbot der beim Nachdenken in den Windows-Code geschaut hat iirc, aber ich find's gerade nicht mehr.
@scy @NexCarter Von Windows gab es eh mehrmals Source Code Leaks, oder?
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@scy Derivative works transformed by AI generate no new copyright--the derivation copyright passes through unchanged from the original. If you tell an AI to rewrite an LGPL library, the result is LGPL with the same rightsholders.
Even with a clean room reimplementation, one could not apply the MIT license, because AI work is unlicensable--anyone can use it however they like, because it's public domain.
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"The test data has also been moved to a separate repo to help prevent any licensing issues"
So you've used the LGPL-licensed tests provided by contributors as a spec for Claude?
And of course Claude wasn't trained on the existing chardet code, nu-uh.
Like, usually when trying to free code from copyright or NDAs, it's an elaborate process, with the authors having to guarantee to never even have looked at the original code.
Did you add "pretend you didn't see the original" to the prompt? lol.
@scy he freed it from copyright. the new code cannot be copyrighted. he can claim to license it however he wants.
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