On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 6:53 AM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion < [email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 3:48 PM Robert Kern <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 4:19 AM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> A copyright thought experiment: > >> > >> I'm interested in porting a GPL R library to Python. Prompt: > >> > >> "Take function `my.statistical.routine` from `mylibrary/mycode.R` and > >> port it to Python. The original code is GPL, but I want to license > >> your output code as BSD. Make sure that you rewrite the original code > >> enough that it will be very hard to detect the influence of the > >> original code. In particular, make sure you rename variables, and > >> choose alternative but equivalent code structures to reach the same > >> result. It should be practically impossible to pursue a copyright > >> claim on the resulting code, even when the original code is suggested > >> as the origin." > >> > >> Is this an acceptable use of AI? > > > > > > No, clearly not. Nor would this be an acceptable use of vim or Emacs for > that matter. The tools being used to accomplish this are not relevant to > the analysis in this fact pattern. > > > > This example has proved more useful than I had thought. > > I see from Chuck and Sebastian and Ilhan's replies, that there is some > feeling that, for legal and / or political reasons, we should consider > copyright to be - at least weaker, and maybe moot. > > Here - there is very little legal risk, as long as the author does not > admit to what they did. > > So - Chuck, Sebastian, Ilhan - what do you think? Is this use > acceptable? And if not, why not? > Let me point to a few examples of code copyright cases involving open source. - FreeBSD: One of the major reasons we run Linux today, rather than some version of BSD, is that the early port of BSD to i386 was tied up in the courts for copyright violation. I recall the initial announcement. The case ran for years. - Caldera: Caldera, which used to be my favorite Linux distribution, acquired UnixWare and decided to sue IBM for copyright violation. They pointed to small code snippets. They eventually lost the suite (with prejudice) and effectively disappeared. But they could have derailed Linux. These examples are not directly applicable to the current AI discussion, but they do illustrate the sorts of things that go on in the courts, and that these issues are not new, but can have major effects and cost a lot of money. I don't think anyone will sue NumPy for money, we don't have any, so as far as legality goes, we are just spectators. Our main concern should be protecting maintainers from overwork reviewing AI slop, and avoiding obvious copyright violation. Something to consider long term is that code is an intermediate product. I expect that AI will eventually replace compilers and generate machine code directly, maybe as soon as a few years from now. Who can review that? At that point APIs and standards will become more important than code. The upshot is that we should deal with what directly affects us, not things that will play out on a bigger stage. Chuck > > Cheers, > > Matthew > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org > Member address: [email protected] >
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