So what would be the status of this code? Nobody holds the copyright for it, so anyone can use it in any way and nobody can sue for anything. It's not GPL, but it sounds pretty open source to me.
Yes, my understanding is that non-humans in the USA, cannot be granted copyright. This puts the work in the public domain, which means it can't be relicensed.
There was a much appealed case of a monkey taking a photo, where it was decided the photo was in the public domain.
It boiled down to the creator not being a "legal person" and so could not hold copyright.
The real problem for software is where the line is for a "sufficient" transformation from the source material by a human to make it acquire copyright. You can write a Dickens' character derived novel and have copyright in it, but not gain control over those characters as Dickens described them.
People sell annotated Bibles, or Shakespeare etc. You can transform it in to something that can acquire copyright, but it must have an artistic step.
This is a big thing in the fine art world as well, you can take inspiration, you can in some circumstances outright copy, but then you need to transform it sufficiently that it becomes your own art. People argue in front of judges about this stuff, of course.
Verne is a good example too, because if you print an English version, the translator acquires copyright in the translated version.
There was a much appealed case of a monkey taking a photo, where it was decided the photo was in the public domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
It boiled down to the creator not being a "legal person" and so could not hold copyright.
The real problem for software is where the line is for a "sufficient" transformation from the source material by a human to make it acquire copyright. You can write a Dickens' character derived novel and have copyright in it, but not gain control over those characters as Dickens described them.