Chardet Relicensing Controversy: Can Coding Agents "Clean Room" Open Source?
Simon Willison's Blog·medium signal
The chardet Python library was relicensed from LGPL to MIT via a Claude Code-assisted "ground-up rewrite" by long-time maintainer Dan Blanchard. Original author Mark Pilgrim disputes the license change. Simon Willison's analysis highlights the legal gray zone: Dan had 12+ years of familiarity with the codebase, Claude was likely trained on chardet, and it referenced parts during the rewrite. This isn't a traditional clean room. For builders: this is the first high-profile test of whether AI-assi