Can coding agents relicense open source through a "clean room" implementation of code?
BlogSimon WillisonMar 5, 2026
AI Summary
The chardet library debate: can coding agents pull the Compaq BIOS clean-room trick in hours instead of months? Simon on the legal and ethical gray zone of AI-generated 'clean room' reimplementations that sidestep copyleft licenses.
From the original
Sponsored by: Honeycomb — AI agents behave unpredictably. Get the context you need to debug what actually happened. Read the blog Over the past few months it’s become clear that coding agents are extraordinarily good at building a weird version of a “clean room” implementation of code. The most…
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