Hi, On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 4:01 PM Charles R Harris <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > 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.
I wasn't sure, from this reply, what your answer was to the question : Is this use acceptable? And if not, why not? 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]
