Carter, am I right that you're making the claim that we don't need to be concerned about copyright infringement with LLMs, because LLMs are literally incapable of producing infringing text for GHC?
You might be interested to look at this LLM submission to the OCaml compiler. The LLM not only copied large swathes of code from another project, but it in fact blurted out copyright headers, marking the code as copywritten by somebody else: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369 You've also referenced Google v. Oracle; worth noting that was a suit claiming $9 billion in damages, and was argued all the way up to the Supreme Court. Additionally, it was not even decided unanimously. I'm not able to share your apparent certainty that there's no possibility of legal entanglements here. Tom > On 09/01/2026 8:11 PM CEST Carter Schonwald via ghc-devs > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > yes, because code is math, and sometimes theres only one proof, and copyright > doesnt protect factual stuff just the ultra soecific exact sentence (except > when its literally the only sane way to say soemthing). > > there is a huge amount of law / case law / history for how this works, and > fortunately literally here means verbatim > > naively these two remarks sound contradictory, but its really a reflection of > the anthropogenic complexity of humanity > > > On Tue, Sep 1, 2026 at 1:56 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > > If you define “exact literal content” so broadly as to allow for > > translations > > of prose, why wouldn't it also apply to translating software to different > > languages or using different naming conventions and other minor code style > > elements? > > > > On 9/1/26 19:50, Carter Schonwald 'carter.schonwald at gmail.com > > (http://gmail.com)' wrote: > > > translations are explicitly reusing the exact literal content, and theres > > > explicitly carve outs in modern law around translated works > > > > > > > > > math and food recipes are explicitly not protected by copyright law. > > > > > > i hope that helps clarify? > > > > > > On Tue, Sep 1, 2026 at 1:41 PM <[email protected] > > > <mailto:[email protected]>> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > building dimilar code for a similar task in a > > > > different language is definitely not infringing unless its also copying > > > all > > > > the text from the source application like some sort of text rpg. > > > What if we compare this to literature? Surely a translation of a book into > > > another language is still considered a derivative work, even if it reuses > > > none > > > of the “literal text”. > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
