No right to relicense this project • Hacker News Board

Re: No right to relicense this project

#291

Post by therealpygon » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #266

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.

Take AI out…if a person can do it, which they can, the situation hasn’t changed. Further, it was a person who did it, with the assistance of AI. Also, the concept that you “can’t be exposed to the code before writing a compatible alternative” is utterly false in their arguments. In fact, one could take every single interface definition they have defined to communicate and use those interfaces directly to write their own, because in fact this i(programmatic) interface code is not covered by copyright (with an implicit fair use exemption due to the face the software cannot operate without activating said interfaces). The Java lawsuit set that as precedent with JDK. A person could have absolutely rewritten this software using the interfaces and their knowledge, which is perfectly legal if they don’t literally copy and re-word code. Now, if it IS simply re-worded copies of the same code and otherwise the entire project structure is basically the same, it’s a different story. That doesn’t sound like what happened.

Finally, how exactly do people think corporations rewrite portions of code that were contributed before re-licensing under a private license? It is ABSOLUTELY possible to rewrite code and relicense it.

Edit: Further, so these people think you contribute to a project, that project is beholden to your contribution permanently and it can never be excised? That seems like it would blatantly violate their original persons rights to exercise their own control of the code without those contributions, which is exactly the purpose of a rewrite.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#292

Post by starkparker » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

Everyone armchair debating the licensing side of this frustrates discussion, because the only licensing discussion that matters is the one in front of a court. Until and unless one happens, this is just a boring hobby.

Otherwise all this rewrite accomplishes is a 2.3% accuracy improvement and some performance gains that might not be relevant in production, in exchange for a broken test suite, breaking changes, and unnecessary legal and ethical risks pushed out as an update to what was already a stable project.

If it's truly a sufficiently separate project that it can be relicensed from LGPL, then it could've just been _a fully separate project with a new identity_, and the license change would've been at least harder to challenge. Instead, we're here.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#293

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #290

CamperBob2 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I'll trade that stick for what GenAI can do for me, in a heartbeat. The question, of course, is how this attitude -- even if perfectly rational at the moment -- will scale into the future. My guess is that pretty much all the original code that will ever need to be…

I think it's very weird but valid I guess to want to be just atomic individual in constant LLM feedback loop. But, at risk of sounding too trite and wholesome here, what about caring for others, the world at large? If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it. Isn't that like even the rational position here if you…

Everything I have now arose from processes of continuous improvement, carried out by smart people taking full advantage of the best available tools and technologies including all available means of automation.

It'll be OK.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#294

Post by camgunz » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #238

camgunz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the authored parts can be copyrighted, and only humans can author [0]. "For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the 'traditional elements of authorship' are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user." "In other cases, however, a work containing AI-generated material will also contain sufficient…

> IMO this is pretty common sense. No one's arguing they're authoring generated code; the whole point is to not author it. Actually this is very much how people think for code. Consider the following consequence. Say I work for a company. Every time I generate some code with Claude, I keep a copy of said code. Once the full code is tested and released, I throw away any code that was not working well. Now I leave the…

No software company thinks this, not Oracle, not Google, not Meta, no one. See: the guy they sued for taking things to Uber.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#295

Post by beepbooptheory » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #293

beepbooptheory wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very weird but valid I guess to want to be just atomic individual in constant LLM feedback loop. But, at risk of sounding too trite and wholesome here, what about caring for others, the world at large? If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it. Isn't that like even the rational position here if you…

Everything I have now arose from processes of continuous improvement, carried out by smart people taking full advantage of the best available tools and technologies including all available means of automation. It'll be OK.

Ah well, I tried.. To paraphrase Nietzsche, a man can be measured by how well he sleeps at night. I can only hope you stay well rested into this future ;).

And yes, it will be ok!

Re: No right to relicense this project

#296

Post by alpaca128 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

0sdi wrote: post #289

surely this can also be used to turn proprietary software into free

If you can afford to defend yourself in court

Re: No right to relicense this project

#297

Post by oxag3n » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 8:21 PM UTC

AI "translation" kills any incentive to open source code.

What's worse - disassembler+AI is good enough to "translate" the binary into working source code, probably in a different programming language than then original.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#298

Post by nothrabannosir » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #224

nothrabannosir wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL exists for the benefit of end users, not developers. It being a chore for developers who want to deny their users the software freedoms is a feature, not a bug.

How does the GPL help a user who doesn't write code themselves?

By allowing them to benefit from the work of others who do. Directly or indirectly.

I’m not good at car maintenance but I would benefit from an environment where schematics are open and cars are easy to maintain by everyone: there would be more knowledge around it, more garages for me to choose from, etc.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#299

Post by lukeschlather » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #290

CamperBob2 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I'll trade that stick for what GenAI can do for me, in a heartbeat. The question, of course, is how this attitude -- even if perfectly rational at the moment -- will scale into the future. My guess is that pretty much all the original code that will ever need to be…

I think it's very weird but valid I guess to want to be just atomic individual in constant LLM feedback loop. But, at risk of sounding too trite and wholesome here, what about caring for others, the world at large? If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it. Isn't that like even the rational position here if you…

> If you wanna get your thing to rewrite curl or something, that's again really weird but fine, but just don't share it or try to make money off of it.

The whole point of the GPL is to encourage sharing! Making money off of GPL code is not encouraged by the text of the license, but it is encouraged by the people who wrote the licenses. Saying "don't share it" is antithetical to the goals of the free software movement.

I feel like everyone is getting distracted by protecting copyright, when in fact the point of the GPL is that we should all share and share alike. The GPL is a negotiation tactic, it is not an end unto itself. And curl, I might note, is permissively licensed so there's no need for a clean room reimplementation. If someone's rewriting it I'm very interested to hear why and I hope they share their work. I'm mostly indifferent to how they license it.

Re: No right to relicense this project

#300

Post by pocksuppet » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

nilsbunger wrote: post #248

pocksuppet wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feeling is no, a work is not a derivative of a compliance test suite that it passes and was used to guide it. But I'm not a lawyer.

We’re going to be in a very weird place: * LLMs make it trivial to recreate almost any software using its test suite (maybe not a derivative work) * LLM generated code has no copyright (according to current court interpretations) Soon we will be able to make an unlicensed copy of anything if we have its test suite and a little money for tokens.

* LLM generated code from a test suite is crap