Simon WillisonMar 5
The chardet open source library relicensed from LGPL to MIT two days ago thanks to a Claude Code assisted "clean room" rewrite - but original author Mark Pilgrim is disputing that the way this was done justifies the change in license - my notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/5/chardet/
Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?

Over the past few months it’s become clear that coding agents are extraordinarily good at building a weird version of a “clean room” implementation of code. The most famous version …

Simon Willison’s Weblog
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦
@simon is your opinion expressed here and in your blog (namely, that copyright laundering through plagiarism machine is most likely ok) shared by the other members of the python software foundation board of directors?
Mar 6 at 6:55amWeb