Simon Willison 3/5/2026

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

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This article examines the emerging controversy of using AI coding agents to perform "clean room" implementations of open-source code, potentially to relicense it. It focuses on the real-world case of the chardet Python library, where a maintainer's MIT-licensed rewrite of the LGPL-licensed original has sparked a debate about derivative works, copyright, and whether AI-assisted rewrites bypass traditional legal safeguards.

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

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