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The chardet Python library became a flashpoint when its sole maintainer of 12 years used Claude to rewrite it from scratch, then relicensed it from LGPL to MIT. The original author reappeared to object, sparking 244 comments. The piece dissects every faction: the maintainer's strategic mistake of keeping the same package name while claiming independence, the mob that ignored the project for years then showed up to moralize, AI optimists celebrating 'license laundering' via LLM rewrites, and copyleft purists invoking rights they never exercised. Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, concludes that current copyright law cannot stop AI-mediated relicensing, calling it a de facto loss for copyleft. The NVIDIA engineer's assessment that v7.0.0 is 'absolutely toxic' for enterprise use underscores the irony: the rewrite made chardet less usable than before. Three deeper threads emerge — project ownership ambiguity, AI destroying clean-room doctrine, and copyleft's sustainability problem — none with clean answers.

License Laundering and the Death of Clean Room

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