The Chardet Controversy: Open Source and the AI Clean Room

In early March 2026, a dispute broke out over a Python library that most developers use every day. Chardet, a character encoding detection tool that powers a large portion of the Python ecosystem, became the unlikely center of a licensing debate. At its core, the controversy asks: can an AI rewrite of copyleft-licensed software be Continue reading "The Chardet Controversy: Open Source and the AI…