LGPL applies to the LGPL’d code, not to every piece of code someone might add to the repository or under the same name implicitly.
The claim being made is that because some prior implementation was licensed one way, all other implementations must also be licensed as such.
AIUI the code has provenance in Netscape, prior to the chardet library, and the Netscape code has provenance in academic literature.
Now the question of what constitutes a rewrite is complex, and maybe somewhat more complex with the AI involvement, but if we take the current maintainers story as honest they almost certainly passed the bar of independence for the code.
The claim being made is that because some prior implementation was licensed one way, all other implementations must also be licensed as such.
AIUI the code has provenance in Netscape, prior to the chardet library, and the Netscape code has provenance in academic literature.
Now the question of what constitutes a rewrite is complex, and maybe somewhat more complex with the AI involvement, but if we take the current maintainers story as honest they almost certainly passed the bar of independence for the code.