I am not following these claims carefully, but I have seen tons of copies of Lawnchair in the Playstore.
Another recent event that comes to my mind is the Simple apps, which AFAIK they always were open source? But that didn’t matter until it got sold and then Fossify was the non shit version of it (the positive side of open source).
No readily-compilable project is still a worthwhile barrier. So I don’t think it’s a bad argument.
If it’s about open-source licenses, it typically allows that kind of repackaging. Which is not the case for closed-source/proprietary.