LLM based rewrites
Christian Brauner <[email protected]> Sat, 7 Mar 2026 21:49:20 +0100
| Newsgroups | dev.linux.lists.tech-board-discuss,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <20260307-clean-room-6118793eb175@brauner> |
Hey, I believe it is a rite of passage to at least once cause a shouting match with a non-technical topic. It seems increasingly viable to rewrite an entire codebase using an LLM and it currently looks like there's at least some examples as in [1] where people try to use an LLM based rewrite as a clean-room implementation to relicense the project. I think the FOSDEM talk at [2] is related to this as well. Maybe this is a "let's worry about it later" situation but I wonder whether this is something that the LF or TAB is actively following. I'm not asking for a legal analysis. I'm mostly looking for reassurance that we as the kernel community and our representatives have an eye on this. I find this quite worrisome. Fwiw, I was made aware that there's a tangentially related discussion on the distribution mailing list at [3]. Thanks! Christian Link: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327 [1] Link: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/releases/tag/7.0.0 [1] Link: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SUVS7G-lets_end_open_source_together_with_this_one_simple_trick [2] Link: https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected] [3]