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@Foxboron@chaos.social

Post #555476

2026-03-04 12:17 UTC

Apparently chardet got Claude to rewrite the entire codebase from LGPL to MIT? https://github.com/chardet/chardet/releases/tag/7.0.0 That is one way to launder GPL code I guess?

Replies (9)

  • @scy@chaos.social 2026-03-04 12:19

    @Foxboron@chaos.social lol right, because Claude certainly wasn't trained on GPL code

    Open ##3089524

  • @k@layer8.space 2026-03-04 12:37

    @Foxboron@chaos.social dear god fuck

    Open ##3089568

  • @Bubu@chaos.social 2026-03-04 12:55

    @Foxboron@chaos.social Oh ffs: https://github.com/psf/requests/issues/7223#issuecomment-3993094073 (requests planning to switch to chardet 7+ as it's only character detection library again now that the licensing is MIT.)

    Open ##3089569

  • @Foxboron@chaos.social, not to mention it doesn't pass its own test suite.

    Open ##3089570

  • @Foxboron@chaos.social but can it even be considered a "clean-room rewrite" given not only it read the original code but also it has been trained on lots of other GPL code? 🤔 I guess that's a very interesting field for some lawyers.

    Open ##3089574

  • @lynne@mk.pars.ee 2026-03-04 13:11

    @Foxboron@chaos.social What a horrible way to do it.

    Open ##3089575

  • @dekkia@dekkia.com 2026-03-04 13:25

    @Foxboron@chaos.social 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?

    Open ##3089576

  • @duckattack@chaos.social 2026-03-04 13:30

    @Foxboron@chaos.social 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/

    Open ##3089579

  • @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! ​:neobot_giggle:​

    Open ##3089581