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 threadMartin Mar 8

@simon
So it seems this talk from FOSDEM became reality almost in an instant:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SUVS7G-lets_end_open_source_together_with_this_one_simple_trick/

FOSDEM 2026 - Let's end open source together with this one simple trick

Show threaddavidak1d ago

@martin one of the authors created https://malus.sh, which looks like satire, but actually does the thing it says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cahSKUYjuTE

@simon

MALUS - Clean Room as a Service | Liberation from Open Source Attribution

Show threadMartin 
@davidak
The talk was so egeregious – should have probably expected that o_O
@simon
4:10pmWeb