No right to relicense this project • Hacker News Board

Re: No right to relicense this project

#261

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #146

dathinab wrote: post #110

The argument that a rewrite is a copyright violation because they are familiar with the code base is not fully sound. "Insider Knowledge" is not relevant for copyright law. That is more in the space of patent law then copyright law. Or else a artist having seen a picture of a sunset over an empty ocean wouldn't be allowed to pain another sunset over an empty ocean as people could claim copyright violation. Through wh…

If I read Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and then proceed to write a structurally identical novel with many of the same story beats and character types, it will not be difficult to convince a jury exposed to these facts that I’ve created a derivative work. On the other hand, if I can prove to the jury’s satisfaction that I’ve never been exposed to Puzo’s work in any form, it’s independent creation.

[deleted]

Re: No right to relicense this project

#262

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #214

TZubiri wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok sure, in the alternative, here's the argument: The AI was trained with the code, so the complete rewrite is tainted and not a clean room. I can't believe this would need spelling out.

"Tainted rewrite" isn't a legal concept either. You have to prove (on balance of probabilities - more likely than not) that the defendant made an unauthorized copy, made an unauthorized derivative work, etc. Clean-room rewriting is a defense strategy, because if the programmer never saw the original work, they couldn't possibly have made a derivative. But even without that, you still have to prove they did. It's not…

[deleted]

Re: No right to relicense this project

#263

Post by raggi » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

il-b wrote: post #259

raggi wrote: post #252

Look, forget the details, step back and consider the implications of the principle. Someone should not be able to write a semi-common core utility, provide it as a public good, abandon it for over a decade, and yet continue to hold the rest of the world hostage just because of provenance. That’s a trap and it’s not in any public interest. The true value of these things only comes from use. The extreme positions for i…

Fork it?

That certainly probably would have reduced the noise.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#264

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

I am confused. In the USA, there has been a clear rule that machine-generated code cannot be copyright. If the "new implementation" was in fact created by Claude (which is my impression), then nobody holds any copyright to the code, and it cannot be licensed under any license at all.

I am sure I am missing something ... what is it?

Re: No right to relicense this project

#265

Post by next_xibalba » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #264

I am confused. In the USA, there has been a clear rule that machine-generated code cannot be copyright. If the "new implementation" was in fact created by Claude (which is my impression), then nobody holds any copyright to the code, and it cannot be licensed under any license at all. I am sure I am missing something ... what is it?

This is effectively a contract. You can put anything you want in a contract, but contracts are enforceable to only to the extent they comply with the law (statutes, case law, the constitution, etc.)

So to settle this, someone needs to violate this license and get sued. Or maybe proactively sue?

Re: No right to relicense this project

#266

Post by maybewhenthesun » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #116

I believe that Pilgrim here does not understand very well how copyright works: > Their claim that it is a "complete rewrite" is irrelevant, since they had ample exposure to the originally licensed code This is simply not true. The reason why the "clean room" concept exists is precisely since actually the law recognizes that independent implementations ARE possibile. The "clean room" thing is a trick to make the litig…

Regardless of the legal interpretations, I think it's very worrying if an automated AI rewrite of GPLed code (or any code for that matter) could somehow be used to circumvent the original license. That kinda takes out the one stick the open source community has to force soulless multinationals to contribute back to the open source projects they use.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#267

Post by ks2048 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

Pannoniae wrote: post #258

kreco wrote: post #189

A comment from 2021: > Unfortunately, because the code that chardet was originally based on was LGPL, we don't really have a way to relicense it. Believe me, if we could, I would. There was talk of chardet being added to the standard library, and that was deemed impossible because of being unable to change the license. So the person that did the rewrite knew this was a dive into dangerous water. That's so disrespectf…

[flagged]

Why didn't he just start a new project?

Re: No right to relicense this project

#268

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

next_xibalba wrote: post #265

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #264

I am confused. In the USA, there has been a clear rule that machine-generated code cannot be copyright. If the "new implementation" was in fact created by Claude (which is my impression), then nobody holds any copyright to the code, and it cannot be licensed under any license at all. I am sure I am missing something ... what is it?

This is effectively a contract. You can put anything you want in a contract, but contracts are enforceable to only to the extent they comply with the law (statutes, case law, the constitution, etc.) So to settle this, someone needs to violate this license and get sued. Or maybe proactively sue?

Remember: this applies to all LLM-generated code, not just chardet. No LLM-generated code is copyrightable, and thus cannot be licensed. The legal challenge could come in any context where LLMs have been used and the code placed under any license (proprietary or otherwise).

Which is going cause a collision between the "not copyrightable" and "derived from copyrighted work" angles.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#269

Post by red_admiral » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #225

red_admiral wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unicode detection is the kind of utility the language maintainers want in their package collection if not in the standard library, and programmers who have to do anything with "plain text" files might want to rely on. Releasing a core library like this under a genuinely free licence (MIT) is a service to anyone working in the ecosystem.

Maybe. Enabling more GPL software to become proprietary isn't exactly a service.

I think they moved chardet from GPL to MIT? If the maintainer made future versions proprietery, they'd surely be forked and then kicked out of the python package repo?

Re: No right to relicense this project

#270

Post by kube-system » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #250

simiones wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit too broad. There are actually three possible cases. When there is similar code, the only defense possible to prove that you have not copied the original is to show that your process is a clean room re-implementation. If the code is completely different, then clean room or not is indeed irrelevant. The only way the author can claim that you violated their copyright despite no apparent similarity…

> When there is similar code, the only defense possible to prove that you have not copied the original is to show that your process is a clean room re-implementation. Yes, but you do not have to prove that you haven’t copied the original; you have to prove you didn’t infringe copyright. For that there are other possible defenses, for example: - fair use - claiming the copied part doesn’t require creativity - arguing…

Courts have ruled that you can't assign copyrights to a machine, because only humans qualify for human rights. ** There is not currently a legal consensus on whether or not the humans using AI tools are creating derivative works when they use AI models to create things.

** this case is similar to an old case where a ~~photographer~~ PETA claimed a monkey owned a copyright to a photo, because they said a monkey took the photo completely on their own. The court said "okay well, it's public domain then because only humans can have copyrights"

Imagine you put a harry potter book in a copy machine. It is correct that the copy machine would not have a copyright to the output. But you would still be violating copyright by distributing the output.