Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?
SMRTR summary
A major licensing controversy erupted when chardet maintainer Dan Blanchard released version 7.0.0 as a ground-up MIT rewrite of the originally LGPL-licensed library, using Claude AI assistance. Original creator Mark Pilgrim contested this relicensing, arguing exposure to the original codebase invalidates any clean-room claims, while Blanchard provided plagiarism detection results showing minimal code similarity to defend the legitimacy of his AI-assisted rewrite.
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