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Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

This is impressive - but is a license change, from the PostgresQL license [0] to AGPL [1].

I like the AGPL and think it's the best truly free open source license, but I worry if this is compatible. Ie, if this is rewritten from the original source, should the original apply? (Yes.) There has been a trend to rewrite open source software with a more restrictive license (like coretools in Rust). This looks considerably more ethical by choosing the AGPL - I just wonder, safer with no change at all?

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

[1] https://github.com/malisper/pgrust?tab=AGPL-3.0-1-ov-file

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You seem to have the restrictiveness backwards? The MIT license (uutils coreutils) is less restrictive than the GPL (GNU coreutils), and the AGPL is more restrictive than the PostgreSQL license.

And it doesn't violate the PostgreSQL license to license the rewrite more restrictively. That's part of what makes MIT-style licenses less restrictive than the GPL or AGPL: they allow for more-restrictive relicensing.

Perhaps ‘restrictive’ was a poor choice of words. ‘Less free’ in the free-software sense.

I’m still putting together my thoughts on various open source licenses especially as we see automated AI rewriting.

I think licensing will have to be re-invented, because now it's trivial to just say: claude, do a "clean-room implementation", so that noone can accuse me of stealing code.

That's what LLM companies have done for years anyway. Inline completions are trained on licensed code. And nobody cares! ;)

If you don’t like the license just let an LLM spend a few days “porting” it and give that port any license you like because that is apparently what we do now.

Yeah. I'm gonna have an LLM rewrite Star Wars and then film it. Should be fine, right?

Star Wars itself is a rewrite of King Arthur stuff so go right the fuck ahead.

LGTM. copyright laws don't matter anymore.

The only good thing to come out of AI.

How is this good? Copyleft licenses are also being ignored.

Patents and copyright stifles innovation. Knowledge should be communal and free.

> Knowledge should be communal and free

I agree, which is why I license my work under copyleft licenses such as AGPLv3 so that anyone has to make their modifications public too.

I think LLMs (especially closed-source models) will make this worse.

Free and communal knowledge means you're easily replaceble by someone else.

I wonder what communal answer you have for someone who would say, "moi2388, your work will be now done by moi2389. Thanks and good bye."

The alternative is that you are not easily replaceable, which means that moi2389 is the one who doesn't get to do the work. Which is good for moi2388, perhaps, but what about moi2389? Either way someone is going to be left out in the cold.

moi2389 should research the market and create a new value, not replace someone else by providing the same value.

Same as what moi2388 would do in the opposite scenario. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

First off they can’t just fire me, I’m from a civilised country. Secondly, feel free to use whatever work I have done in the past, I still think you won’t be able to do my work in the future.

I have a lot of coworkers in civilized countries, they seem to get made redundant too. Sometimes they go on garden leave for a while first but the end result is the same.

> LGTM. copyright laws don't matter anymore.

hear hear, and good riddance too.

Only for the billion $ LLM companies that pay dear leader

Making a movie that has basically the same plot as a previous movie with slight changes is a common occurrence.

The thing you have to be wary of with movies is trademark law. Your Star Wars copy can't use the word "Darth Vader", that's trademarked. It can't use Darth Vader's mask, Darth Vader's suit or Darth Vader's breathing either, all trademarked. And with trademark law the bar to pass is basically "would a reasonable but uninformed consumer be at risk of confusing your product for the trademark". LLMs can't launder that for you. You have to make actual changes, like Spaceballs did

Spaceballs is a parody, which is specifically an exception to the rules; it’s called “fair use”. If Spaceballs was not a comedy, it would not be permitted to exist.

Good ol' Varth Dader. A completely novel villain.

The PostgreSQL License is a variant of the BSD license and is therefore compatible with the (A)GPL.

Comprehend it this way: You create a blank (A)GPL project and incorporate the upstream BSD codebase into it. While those original upstream files remain under their original permissive license, the project as a whole is governed by the (A)GPL (plus the attribution requirements of the upstream license, which the GPL permits). From there, you can add your own code under the AGPL and distribute the combined work under the AGPL.

If someone takes your code and uses only your portion, they can use it under the AGPL alone. However, if they also include the upstream source code, then the attribution requirements of the upstream license must still be met.

Yes, BSD licenses are compatible with AGPL meaning BSD licensed code can be combined with AGPL licensed code while complying with both licenses. However, it does not give you permission to relicense the BSD code (or derivative works) as AGPL. The author is free to license any new code they write as AGPL, however the license for the machine translated code is another question. If it is considered a derivative work (which I think it should be) then it must remain under the Postgres license.

If it is not a derivative work, then for copyright to apply at all then it must be an "original work" which has "at least a modicum" of creativity applied by malisper in the translation. If this is satisfied then malisper could choose any license for the translated code they want, compatible with Postgres or not. If it isn't satisfied then no license applies, because it isn't eligible for copyright - essentially it is public domain.

The safe and polite thing to do is to keep the same license when performing machine translation.

IANAL, but calling this "relicensing" is technically inaccurate. It is more precise to describe it as adding constraints. When you combine your work with upstream code, you are layering additional requirements (like copyleft) onto the existing attribution requirements. The original limitations remain in effect. Therefore, it is not a shift from A to B, but rather from A to A ∪ B.

This practice is entirely compatible with the PostgreSQL License, but it is often prohibited by GPL variants. You typically cannot combine GPL code with code under most other copyleft licenses, such as the Eclipse Public License.

Regarding copyright status, AI-assisted work is increasingly recognized as copyrightable in many jurisdictions, provided the process involves a sufficient level of human creative input (though the specific threshold varies by jurisdiction). Only work generated purely by AI, with no human involvement, is arguably public domain. In a case like this, which is akin to "pair programming," the output is almost certainly copyrightable.

IAAL (not legal advice) and I’m not sure the issue is settled.

The BSD license only explicitly permits the author “to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement.”

By default, the owner of a protected work retains all rights not conveyed to someone else. Changing the license isn’t one of the enumerated activities, and so I think there’s a case to be made that it’s not permitted.

Now if the author wants to claim it’s a new work, as opposed to a modification (which opens up a big bag of issues by itself because this was AI-authored), then the author can license it however they see fit.

You are not really changing the license of the original work though. You are not impacting what the author or anyone else can do. You are distributing a copy under different, more restrictive terms.

A bit like me buying a comic book, then offering to sell it to you under the condition that you never let my brother read it and that you make any future owner agree to the same terms. That's perfectly legal, and there is no reason I would need permission from the author (or publisher) to do that

Your redistribution license only applies to the part you own copyright on. Everything else is still under the original license. You can add AGPL but that doesn't take away the BSD license from the parts you didn't create.

I’m not sure it’s so easily severable in this case.

A comic book is a physical object. This analogy doesn’t hold. When you give a comic book to someone, you’re only transferring the copy and its implied license that carries with it. You can set the terms of the physical object, but you can’t change the license of the content within it.

Suppose you get a license to view a copy of a work (streaming or a paid subscription to a newspaper site). Your permission to consume the media begins and ends with the license terms, which allow you to view the work (and, since it’s necessary, to make a transient copy) during the period of the subscription. You don’t get to relicense it to someone else under those terms.

AGPL and copyleft licenses are not restrictive, they provide forward (open source) guarantees. The only thing they "restrict" is the ability to remove freedoms. Therefore is not a restriction, is a guarantee. A guarantee that the project will endure as open source.

I wouldn't go as far as calling permissive licensing "restrictive" because they actually allow for reducing freedoms; but copyleft is definitely not restrictive at all, it's the opposite.

Having said that, I like and appreciate both kind of licenses and I have and will continue creating open source software using ones or the others.

The Postgres license is already fully compatible with the AGPL. BSD/MIT is more permissive.

Wow, yeah, really hate this.

If this software was written by a mechanical process, the license is a nullity. It’s public domain.

Being created by a "mechanical process" from an existing creative work doesn't mean it's not a derivative work.

For instance, if I take a copy of $BIG_BUDGET_MOVIE, and resample the video frames from 1080p to 720p through a purely mechanical transformation, that doesn't make the output public domain.

You might be right, if it is a derivative work and not a new one. There’s some evidence that the authors consider it a new one because they’re attempting to change its license.

The BSD license doesn’t explicitly convey the right to create derivative works but it does convey the right to “modify” the software. (They seem similar but “modify” is a narrower verb.) So is this a modification? A derivative work? A new work entirely? If it shares no code with the work from which it was derived, things are more complex than it may seem (and it no longer fits the “compressed video” analogy very well).

The law and courts are not really settled here from what I can tell. I expect some day hundreds of millions $$$ will be spent on this

It wasn’t written by a mechanical process, though. It was ported (translated) from an existing creative work into a new language.

Surely you wouldn’t say a Spanish translation of a Harry Potter work is in the public domain while the original work is under copyright?

I would agree with you but for the author’s attempt to publish it under a new license. I think they can either claim it’s a new work (in which case it’s public domain) or claim it’s a derivative work (in which case I don’t think they can change the license).

I imagine a court would call it a derivative work if tested.

Things get released as GPL or AGPL that were originally BSD or MIT license all the time. The terms of the copyleft license include all the terms of the attribution licenses. Whether this is a valid thing legally I’m not sure but it doesn’t seem anyone’s challenged it. BSD code is often found in closed-source proprietary products as long as the required attributions are met and the original contributors are understood not to be held to any responsibility or warranty.

The licenses tend to say unmodified or modified copies can be redistributed in source or binary form “provided that the following conditions are met”. Relicensing the code in a way that guarantees those conditions are met has been the accepted thing to do in the community for years - whether that’s GPL/LGPL/AGPL or a proprietary license.

The BSD license (which is the one at issue here) does not explicitly permit the licensee to change the license terms of covered software upon redistribution. Perhaps it would be permitted under an expansive interpretation, but under a narrow reading, it might not be. The default rule, however, is that all rights not granted by license remain with the owner.

As you said, the question has never been litigated or settled.

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