Re: LLM based rewrites

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> writes:

> On Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:31:03 -0700
> "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
>
>> It is somewhat hard to see how that would constitute a "clean-room"
>> rewrite. A clean-room rewrite entails two teams, one (the "clean" room)
>> which must be certified to have never seen the code in question, and all
>> communications between the two teams must be auditable.
>
> I was thinking the same.

The argumentation that is being made (which I am trying to reproduce but
am *not* advocating) is that "a clean-room rewrite is just one means to
an end" and that, in this specific case, the code being rewritten was
explicitly excluded from the context given to the bot (though that turns
out not to entirely be the case).  In theory, it only had the desired
API and a set of tests available to it.

The fact that every version of chardet was surely in its training data
is not deemed to be relevant.

jon