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You’re allowed to describe how it works to someone else and have them write it. If you can write a full specification of the code without any code snippets, or

You’re allowed to describe how it works to someone else and have them write it. If you can write a full specification of the code without any code snippets, or write a full TDD test set, and hand it off to someone who can swear they’ve never looked at the source material, you can still pull off a clean-room copy. I had to do that for a small lib due to European copyright laws. They don’t like Public Domain. There’s some precedent where the author can change their mind and sue because you can’t actually consent to not consenting to people using your stuff. MIT is great, PD is the Bog of Stench.

stavros 2y ago
Yep, this is correct, you probably should document the process of description and implementation.
skissane 2y ago
> You’re allowed to describe how it works to someone else and have them write it. Couldn’t you get an LLM to do that? “Here’s the code for this function, add conditionals to fix any null pointer bugs” Or: “Here’s a function and a unit test that exposes a bug in it, modify the function so the unit test passes”. With that approach, the LLM could even (autonomously) try multiple times until the test passed. > I had to do that for a small lib due to European copyright laws. They don’t like Public Domain. This shouldn’t be an issue for public domain dedications which contain a fallback copyright license such as CC0. [0] People say the Unlicense also falls in that category, but (unfortunately) its wording is less than completely clear, so it is debatable. Another option is “PD-equivalent licenses” such as 0BSD or MIT-0, which are technically copyright licenses but designed to give you the same rights as PD (e.g. reuse without requiring attribution). Now, what some random German judge is going to make of them, who knows. [0] Although some people, e.g. Fedora, don’t like its clauses around patents
- hinkley 2y ago
  When people pay $100 million for your product they expect to be fully indemnified. It was a pain in my ass but I can’t really blame them.

stavros 2y ago

Yep, this is correct, you probably should document the process of description and implementation.

skissane 2y ago

> You’re allowed to describe how it works to someone else and have them write it. Couldn’t you get an LLM to do that? “Here’s the code for this function, add conditionals to fix any null pointer bugs” Or: “Here’s a function and a unit test that exposes a bug in it, modify the function so the unit test passes”. With that approach, the LLM could even (autonomously) try multiple times until the test passed. > I had to do that for a small lib due to European copyright laws. They don’t like Public Domain. This shouldn’t be an issue for public domain dedications which contain a fallback copyright license such as CC0. [0] People say the Unlicense also falls in that category, but (unfortunately) its wording is less than completely clear, so it is debatable. Another option is “PD-equivalent licenses” such as 0BSD or MIT-0, which are technically copyright licenses but designed to give you the same rights as PD (e.g. reuse without requiring attribution). Now, what some random German judge is going to make of them, who knows. [0] Although some people, e.g. Fedora, don’t like its clauses around patents

hinkley 2y ago
When people pay $100 million for your product they expect to be fully indemnified. It was a pain in my ass but I can’t really blame them.