Mark Pilgrim, the original author of the Python chardet library, has filed a GitHub issue asserting that the maintainers had no legal right to relicense the project in version 7.0.0. He argues that the LGPL requires modified versions to remain under the same license, and that the maintainers' claim of a 'complete rewrite' does not exempt them from this obligation since they had full exposure to the original licensed code. He demands the project revert to its original LGPL license. Community comments note the legal complexity, referencing Google v. Oracle and pointing out that an AI-assisted rewrite based on the original code likely still constitutes a derivative work.
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