Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
tuananh.net
Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
1–10 of 408 posts
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#2Interesting questions raised by recent SCOTUS refusal to hear appeals related to AI an copyright-ability, and how that may affect licensing in open source.
Hoping the HN community can bring more color to this, there are some members who know about these subjects.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#3This is precedent setting. In this case the rewrite was in same language, but if there's a python GPL project, and it's tests (spec) were used to rewrite specs in rust, and then an implementation in rust, can the second project be legally MIT, or any other?
If yes, this in a sense allows a path around GPL requirements. Linux's MIT version would be out in the next 1-2 years.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#4> In traditional software law, a “clean room” rewrite requires two teams
Is the "clean room" process meaningfully backed by legal precedent?
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#5> In traditional software law, a “clean room” rewrite requires two teams Is the "clean room" process meaningfully backed by legal precedent?
Yes. Compaq's reverse engineering of the IBM PC BIOS set the precedent.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#6I like the idea of AI-generated ~code~ anything being public domain. Public data in, public domain out.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#7> In traditional software law, a “clean room” rewrite requires two teams Is the "clean room" process meaningfully backed by legal precedent?
Sure. The reimplementation of the IBM PC BIOS that gave birth to IBM Compatibles is the canonical example.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#8> In traditional software law, a “clean room” rewrite requires two teams Is the "clean room" process meaningfully backed by legal precedent?
I am not a lawyer, but from my understanding the legal precedent is NEC v. Intel which established that clean-room software development is not infringing, even if it performs the same functionality as the original.
As an aside, this clean room engineering is one of the plot points of Season 1 of the TV show Halt and Catch Fire where the fictional characters do this with the BIOS image they dumped.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#9That code is still LGPL, it doesn't matter what some release engineer writes in the release notes on Github. All original authors and copyright holders must have explicitly agreed to relicense under a different license, otherwise the code stays LGPL licensed.
Also the mentioned SCOTUS decision is concerned with authorship of generative AI products. That's very different of this case. Here we're talking about a tool that transformed source code and somehow magically got rid of copyright due to this transformation? Imagine the consequences to the US copyright industry if that were actually possible.
Re: Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite
#10This is precedent setting. In this case the rewrite was in same language, but if there's a python GPL project, and it's tests (spec) were used to rewrite specs in rust, and then an implementation in rust, can the second project be legally MIT, or any other? If yes, this in a sense allows a path around GPL requirements. Linux's MIT version would be out in the next 1-2 years.
No, GPL still holds even if you transform the source code from one language to another language.