--- title: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and... description: Dan Blanchard relicensed chardet from LGPL to MIT after using Claude to reimplement it from scratch, claiming the result is an independent new work. The... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/is-legal-the-same-as-legitimate-ai-reimplementation-and-the-erosion-of-copyleft-as05fq4nh twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft | daily.dev og:description: Dan Blanchard relicensed chardet from LGPL to MIT after using Claude to reimplement it from scratch, claiming the result is an independent new work. The... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/is-legal-the-same-as-legitimate-ai-reimplementation-and-the-erosion-of-copyleft-as05fq4nh og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AS05Fq4Nh.png og:image:alt: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Dan Blanchard relicensed chardet from LGPL to MIT after using Claude to reimplement it from scratch, claiming the result is an independent new work. The original author objected, arguing this violates the spirit of copyleft. Armin Ronacher and Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) both defended the relicensing on legal grounds. This essay argues both conflate legal permissibility with social legitimacy, ignore the directional difference between the GNU/UNIX precedent (proprietary→free) and this case (copyleft→permissive), and speak from positions of privilege that align with their conclusions. The author contends copyleft becomes more necessary, not less, as AI lowers reimplementation costs, and proposes extending copyleft to cover API specifications and test suites as the next evolution of open source licensing norms. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Chardlet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing](https://daily.dev/posts/chardlet-dispute-shows-how-ai-will-kill-software-licensing-yvj2uh0ym) · The Register · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Relicensing with AI-assisted rewrite](https://daily.dev/posts/relicensing-with-ai-assisted-rewrite-swhb5huiw) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [GNU and the AI reimplementations](https://daily.dev/posts/gnu-and-the-ai-reimplementations-agwjghcmg) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI And The Ship of Theseus](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-and-the-ship-of-theseus-pkcywq7xd) · Armin Ronacher · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#licensing](https://daily.dev/tags/licensing), [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#python](https://daily.dev/tags/python) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/is-legal-the-same-as-legitimate-ai-reimplementation-and-the-erosion-of-copyleft-as05fq4nh) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/is-legal-the-same-as-legitimate-ai-reimplementation-and-the-erosion-of-copyleft-as05fq4nh","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/is-legal-the-same-as-legitimate-ai-reimplementation-and-the-erosion-of-copyleft-as05fq4nh"},"datePublished":"2026-03-09T17:53:56.737Z","dateModified":"2026-03-15T03:30:22.987Z","description":"Dan Blanchard relicensed chardet from LGPL to MIT after using Claude to reimplement it from scratch, claiming the result is an independent new work. 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