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

[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.

https://natlawreview.com/article/copyright-offices-latest-guidance-ai-and-copyrightability

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

[wronglang@bayes.club]

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

[wronglang@bayes.club]

@mgorny @Foxboron

That's beautiful

[foxboron@chaos.social]

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

[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).

[thomasjwebb@mastodon.social]

@Foxboron @scy hol' up... the *output* isn't copyrightable? That would be awesome if they decided that.

[thomasjwebb@mastodon.social]

@Foxboron Ugh I've rewritten things from scratch for licensing reasons, but the rule is I can't look at the original code. This definitely feels like it's not respecting the spirit of copyleft by using the loophole that bots glanced at the code...

[aeris@firefish.imirhil.fr]

@Foxboron@chaos.social @scy@chaos.social No. You can violate existing copyrighted material during creation of a not copyrightable material.

[missingclara@chaos.social]

@mgorny @Foxboron and they somehow fudged the git history, it seems like they added an orphan commit to the 5.x tags in order to fix readthedocs? at least the tags are marked as immutable now 🙃

[aeris@firefish.imirhil.fr]

@Foxboron@chaos.social @joshbressers@infosec.exchange @scy@chaos.social Supreme court dismissed copyright case against generated material. Nobody discard case for infringement by this generated material.

You can't pursue somebody for reusing your AI material, because such material can't be copyrighted), but you can pursue somebody to have generated AI material from your copyrighted (and so not AI) material.

[aeris@firefish.imirhil.fr]

@thomasjwebb@mastodon.social @Foxboron@chaos.social @scy@chaos.social They decide that. AI material is not human generated, so not copyrightable.
But it doesn't mean this material is not copyright infringement, the only dropped case concerned AI ppl trying to sue other AI ppl based on copyright, not at all real human pursuing AI material.
Currently NYT is on this way, and solid rock at this time : https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/technology/new-york-times-perplexity-ai-lawsuit.html

[jzb@hachyderm.io]

@Foxboron @joshbressers @scy Open-source projects that have sought to be compatible with proprietary software, e.g. Samba trying to be compatible with Windows SMB, etc., have (if I'm not misremembering) taken a "clean room" approach and outright stated they do not want any code from any developer who had even looked at the MSFT code for fear of being accused of infringement.

The copyrightability of LLM output is not relevant here - the only question is whether a court would consider the original license infringed upon in the creation of the output.

As I understand it, though, this is a reimplementation of a codebase by the same contributors -- Dan Blanchard seems to be the primary maintainer before and after the rewrite, so ISTM he'd be able to relicense the project regardless of whether it was passed through an LLM first.

It will be interesting when this happens because a company or person decides "I don't like copyleft, so I'll just run this through the LLM wash until I get a functional copy". But this doesn't seem to be that.