Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?

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https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/5/chardet/

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They are claiming they did a magic trick with an LLM and now the project is MIT licensed. And you are saying that it’s not, it’s public domain.

That’s absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the rewrite of chardet infringes on the copyright of the original work. That is neither MIT licensed nor public domain. It’s illegally reproduced and distributed copyrighted work.

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Then what did you mean when you said:

the output will always be in the public domain

It seems to me like a pretty clear statement.

I’m saying that the rewrite of chardet infringes on the copyright of the original work. That is neither MIT licensed nor public domain. It’s illegally reproduced and distributed copyrighted work.

That I never disputed, I’m not interested about chardet or whatever happened here, I’m interested about your comment that LLM output is always public domain, and if so, whether it could be used to achieve the goal of reimplementing a library so that it achieves the same purpose but isn’t bound by the original license, if you do it without infringing on the copyright of the original work.

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