Relicensing Open Source with an AI

Simon Willison posed this question in his blog: "Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?" Good question! I decided to talk to claude about it. Here is the transcript from that session. TL;DR: Maybe, sorta. Clean Room Implementation Discussion Exchange 1: Initial Question User: If given an open source GitHub repository, can you write as spec from FORTRAN in the repository? Using that spec, can you write a clean room implementation in Python? Assistant: Yes, I can do both, but with important caveats and legal considerations: Part 1: Writing a Specification from FORTRAN Code What I CAN do: ✅ Read FORTRAN source code from a GitHub repository ✅ Analyze the algorithm's logic, inputs, outputs, and data flow ✅ Document the mathematical operations and computational methods ✅ Describe what the code does at a functional level ✅ Create a language-agnostic specification of the algorithm ✅ Identify key functions, subroutines, and their purposes ✅ Docume