M. K. | 37,000
Baldur BjarnasonIf you had any doubt that the rise of LLM tools is a threat to F/OSS, even beyond the fact that its trained on it without permission, and is now frequently used to replace it (why import a battle-tested library when you can have an "agent" half-ass it?), people are now using LLMs to create derivative rewrites of open source projects to give them cover for bullshit relicensing attempts.
Also, this is what brings Mark Pilgrim back to the internet after all these years?
Cursed timeline.
Kris Warner@baldur and unfortunately continues to show that Armin Ronacher should leave it: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327#issuecomment-4003705494
Michael Simons@baldur In the last weeks I have seen several Java people push out AI based rewrites of something like Ratatui (TUI framework in Rust), or Kairo (SVG rendering) as "the next big thing".
It's everywhere.
@baldur Not that I mind having options, especially on things that had been neglected in "my" ecosystem so far.
I do question the sustainability of these things, even in the midterm run. If they are only "show offs", it takes away from the original, and puts inevitable tech debt on anyone building atop.
@rotnroll666 Yeah, disconnecting software from a knowledgable community volunteering relevant expertise to solve a problem doesn't seem like a long-term sustainable practice.
Kapitän ClownfeuerAnd not just any old “people” but the current maintainers are doing this nonsense!
gary
paranoid@baldur IMO The anger from rust rewrites has nothing to do with the programming language. It comes from the fact that they are almost always corporate sponsored efforts to replace a GPL license with a corporate-friendly license (often MIT), done in the guise of "security" or "modernizing".
The re-licensing is almost always lost in the culture war discourse that is pumped out by "apolitical foss" commentators (type "linux rust rewrite" into youtube to see plenty of examples)
Taran Rampersad@baldur with the recent supreme court ruling on works created by llms being unable to be copyrighted...
#Copyright is for humans.
I ain't a lawyer. But that's an obvious problem for #vibecoding and #agenticai works.
An odd way to come at it for some, but there it is. From #SCOTUS.
https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-copyright
volkrisFirst, it wasn't a supreme court ruling. They refused to get involved to make a ruling.
But to the point, copyright is for society, not for humans.
Copyright is a convenience of law created by legislators because it's seen as a social good to sort out ownership and grant privileges that encourage compositions to be released to the world.
That's why it's limited. If it was for humans it would be tied to humans, but it's not. It's simply a system based on whatever lawmakers see best.
Currently, lawmakers are requiring a human to be involved, but there's no reason they couldn't change that should it be seen as better for society.
Gina
Jonny@baldur I'm going to get an LLM to relicense the entire Java Programing Language, Oracle will get rid of this mess in no time : D
MacCruiskeen@ojonnysilva @baldur Since LLM output isn't 'IP' in the usual sense, you shouldn't even be able to license it. You could just say it's public domain. But yeah, you would think that the businesse trying to replace everybody with AI presumably still want to control the results, businesses like Oracle are going to lobby to be able to make that happen one way or another.
Elric@baldur Good timing. Just scheduled a meeting with my lawyer to discuss AI & Copyright and the implications on my freelance contracts. Gonna bring this up as an example.
mkj@elricofmelnibone If you get a reasonably general answer that you can share, please consider doing that. I'm sure plenty of people would be curious!
(And if you do, please specify the jurisdiction.)
Andrew GravesI get that the AI rewrite is a load of BS, but the relicensing could happen without any AI, so the real issue in this scenario is the disrespect towards all the original authors and people that have been involved. The AI slop just 10x the whole situation.
The question is: Why do people STILL think it's fine to relicense stuff, even if they're not even legally allowed to? This hasn't happened for the first time, jeez 😅
@graves501 "AI" 10xing an existing problem in software dev is such a recurring thing at this point that it's practically a cliche. 🙂
@baldur I guess the right emoji for this situation is this one: 🥲
Why can't we have nice things anymore without people doubling down on whatever enshitification 😅
Mark StrubergNo, legally a re-license is not possible except you have an CLA (Contributor License Agreement) which gives you this right, or if ALL the IP holders agree.
Means basically all historic contributors of parts and mechanisms which are still in use today. Point is that a simple AI driven 'rewrite' is not more of a rewrite than doing a simple code reformatting. Especially since AI cannot create IP in the first place.
I've never said that it's possible (legally) to re-license. Read my post again.
My comment was more about - while AI is involved in this scenario - it's still the people that think pulling a re-licensing move (even though legally not feasible) that are the issue here. Just trying to attempt this is like flipping off the original authors and contributors. Just a huge dick move 😅
@graves501 @baldur It just came to me that it might be even worse than I thought.
This 'AI rewrite' code has a high chance of not even passing the threshold of originality. Thus it does not even create originary IP in the first place!
So maybe they are not even allowed to add any license to their rewrite at all? If the AI has taken the original code as base token space, then it is still the original license.
degenerating degenerate@baldur Well, nothing stops humans writing anew and licensing projects how they like, eg clang (Apache v2) vs gcc (GPL3+), toybox (0BSD) vs busybox (GPL2). Naturally humans are going to simplify the process by using AI to write the rewrite, same as they're using AI for everything else.
Where's the "threat to FOSS", it's just more FOSS licensed code available than before.
@baldur Thanks for nudging me over the edge on this; I wrote this as there are real questions of authorship that have not been addressed with AI.
Lucas@baldur been reading through the comments in this thread and thought "wow, what a remarkably bad take". Then I looked at the username and was honestly shocked to see mitsuhiko. I remember him as the smart Python guy from the early 2010s. I wonder what happened 😞
Landa 
I don't know but I remember having the exact same thought some time before LLMs cropped up.
Brian Repko@baldur I explored this same issue with edgePython a while ago
https://brianrepko.github.io/blog/posts/2026-02-26-edgepython-and-ai/