This a branch-off of the UniversalDetector.framework source code taken from the Perian SVN using the following procedure:

git svn clone http://svn.perian.org/trunk/
clone --no-hardlinks trunk UniversalDetector
cd UniversalDetector
git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter UniversalDetector HEAD -- --all
git reset --hard
git gc --aggressive
git prune
git remote rm origin

The procedure above is based on
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/359424/detach-subdirectory-into-separate-git-repository
and keeps the history intact.

I have put this up with the intention of collecting the various efforts of maintaining of and changes to this framework's source code here on github. 

The core of the frameworks is the (LGPL) Mozilla automatic charset detection library. You can read more about it here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/detectorsrc.html