alt Hacker NewsMy opinion on the ending open questions:
> Does this library represent a legal violation of copyright of either the Rust library or the Python one? Even if this is legal, is it ethical to build a library in this way?
Currently, I am experimenting with two projects in Claude Code: a Rust/Python port of a Python repo which necessitates a full rewrite to get the desired performance/feature improvements, and a Rust/Python port of a JavaScript repo mostly because I refuse to install Node (the speed improvement is nice though).
In both of those cases, the source repos are permissively licensed (MIT), which I interpret as the developer intent as to how their code should used. It is in the spirit of open source to produce better code by iterating on existing code, as that's how the software ecosystem grows. That would be the case whether a human wrote the porting code or not. If Claude 4.5 Opus can produce better/faster code which has the same functionality and passes all the tests, that's a win for the ecosystem.
As courtesy and transparency, I will still link and reference the original project in addition to disclosing the Agent use, although those things aren't likely required and others may not do the same. That said, I'm definitely not using an agent to port any GPL-licensed code.
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That's about where I'm settled on this right now. I feel like authors who select the GPL have made a robust statement about their intent. It may be legal for me to copyright-launder their library (maybe using the trick where one LLM turns their code into a spec and another turns that spec into fresh code) but I wouldn't do that because it would subvert the spirit of the license.
> As courtesy and transparency, I will still link and reference the original project in addition to disclosing the Agent use, although those things aren't likely required and others may not do the same. That said, I'm definitely not using an agent to port any GPL-licensed code.
IANAL but regardless of the license, you have to respect their copyright and it’s hard to argue that an LLM ported library is anything but a derivative work. You would still have to include the original copyright notices and retain the license (again IANAL).