undefined

points

[-]

While I do like pgrust's license, I do feel like it's kind of wrong to port in such a direct way and change the license. I guess this isn't a fork, but it kind of is? It looks like according to this post [0], they did a Claude Fable + Opus re-write. I know that legally this is seemingly a valid way to do things and avoid copyright, but it feels wrong to me. I don't even necessarily think that my feelings are correct, but standing on the backs of giants and using an LLM to "reimplement" the code (not a clean room implementation) feels like it's it _shouldn't_ be a valid way to avoid copyright or allow for license changes.

Now, I don't know how MIT -> AGPL re-licensing specifics work, but still.

[0] https://malisper.me/postgres-in-rust-regression-suite/

by nz8 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback mechanism. This is almost certainly a derived work (and thus a fork, and should thus have the original license and copyright preserved).

For example, if I compiled PG into x86-64 assembly, and then decompiled it into C (via, say, IDA), and then polished that decompiled C code into very readable C code, it is still a derived work. For some reason, people think that if you include an LLM or Agent, copyright can be ignored, and plagiarism is now no longer possible.

It is similar to the crypto-folks thinking that if you use crypto, you no longer have to pay taxes, because the internet/computers make all inconvenient realities go away.

Honestly, such flagrant and arrogant copyright violations make it hard for me to take the project seriously, because it seems like a desperate stunt for attention (which itself may be a solid business move, but that is besides the point).

Put differently, if one were to fork pgrust, strip away the new license and copyright, and restore the original PG license and copyright (while also adding malisper+team to that copyright), they would face no legal consequences at all. In fact, they would probably be a less legal risk than the pgrust team.

by malisper6 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

> My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback mechanism.

This is correct

> and thus a fork, and should thus have the original license and copyright preserved)

This is not correct. The Postgres license is permissive. We need to include a copy of the license (which we do in the NOTICE file[0]) but we CAN relicense the Postgres code however we want as long as we meet the requirements of the license. pgrust is a derived work of Postgres, but Postgres allows derived works to be under a different license.

[0] https://github.com/malisper/pgrust/blob/main/NOTICE

by imhoguy10 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

Does that license protect anything legally? This is written by AI under some initial guidance. Prompts may be protected but the output of unlicensed knowledge model corpus?