From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lamorak.hansenpartnership.com (lamorak.hansenpartnership.com [198.37.111.173]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4DF1D3D7D6D for ; Mon, 9 Mar 2026 16:16:07 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=198.37.111.173 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1773072968; cv=none; b=VyLOXbJfFh5CMBV2VIv7lW+qcyKIZrxXBvSoqgE3o0s2S2EkFu6vYOqRSwOf3w4L3oOtngvxnljt/JWJdV4JZlbkyDb/HrGnmDcroMcEKhc36lIHxJom+o545N9mNE9eN/HokfQXG71VRHrgo2/XCm+bfFULwVe8XZX6eb8Qka8= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1773072968; c=relaxed/simple; bh=m9BXnM2+tKzaV6P20T5JfVkBo3al9z01nq8nIj+pQJM=; h=Message-ID:Subject:From:To:Cc:Date:In-Reply-To:References: Content-Type:MIME-Version; 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AHBLpBdnl9SOe8ETkv6GqbZrXUED/dAbRVIT5vHP51zyYB8rAUjp3PnzxsXFG8eQaacEyKSl0DKDlgKuQ+k292LVGJhEva8z4cwg3JcrQWzbpTRskQRP624aQ7t0LKbNfXqfYT13TvZNTDdjQaCJRJ3EG8uXOszVKuc0guXunZPmmq6x1Y3bOfOezcFYoywwL3nKef+Z5sQrjG3/5NLeu+W Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable User-Agent: Evolution 3.50.3 Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 On Sat, 2026-03-07 at 21:49 +0100, Christian Brauner wrote: [... > Fwiw, I was made aware that there's a tangentially related discussion > on the distribution mailing list at [3]. The lawyers on the European Legal Network are already debating this point. However, I really doubt that feeding the code base into a LLM and saying rewrite it will pass muster at least under the US legal tests for originality: it's the same reason why you can't give an engineering team the code base and say rewrite it. You have to apply the clean room principles of one team reducing the code base to an API reference and a separate team reimplementing it as a new code base to get the required separation from being a derived work. My point not being the legal one, but the technical one that the clean room reduction to an API and back to code can be done by independent LLMs, but likely not on the scale that something as big as the kernel would require. So it could work for small code bases but would be prohibitively costly for huge ones. Regards, James