Google stole open source code without crediting the authors (Artemis/Minitap)

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MMysteryPancake about 12 hours ago 25 commentsRead Article on minitap.ai

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Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dataflow•about 12 hours ago

> The author history was harder to understand. An earlier package file listed Pierre-Louis Favreau, Jean-Pierre Lo, and Nicolas Dehandschoewercker. The version that replaced it removed all three names and substituted another author. The only change to the files was the author list. GitHub’s activity record shows that the replacement happened through a force push in August, before our investigation this September.

Wow, this looks pretty damning. I can't imagine Google seeing this as worth the risks. Is an innocent explanation possible here?

eadwu•about 11 hours ago

Not Google or related to any of the projects.

This is normal (specific to pyproject.toml overwriting authors). I am not sure about pyproject.toml conventions but I would have done the same. This is the equivalent of telling you who the maintainers of the project are.

Usually what you see in the code is the retention of Copyright statements on source code and LICENSE with some reference on README.

VoidWhisperer•about 11 hours ago

If there is an innocent explanation, I'd love to hear it, because it kind of reads like the force push was done to move the commit with the attribution change out of the public eye so it wasnt clear what they had done.

Maybe it is possible the google engineer didn't understand how open source licenses work, or didn't care since maybe it was supposed to be an internal project first that eventually ended up open sourced?

dataflow•about 10 hours ago

Given the replacement author and email seem like a random person rather than an employee, I wonder if whomever did this thought they had found the "real" author and that somehow the others were incorrect? It's confusing, I don't know.

gr71•about 11 hours ago

This !

neilv•about 11 hours ago

Regardless of whether or not Google is liable, what would be interesting to me is how this happened, the role(s) at Google that were involved, when each knew of the problem, and what each did.

(I'm interested in what this says about current culture.)

RossBencina•about 11 hours ago

Here's the force pushed pyproject.toml with the new author if anyone cares:

https://github.com/google/artemis/compare/14e02c4c27bc5b3c0d...

    + authors = [
    +     { name = "somew1nd", email = "[REDACTED]@outlook.com" },
    + ]

Seems legit

camgunz•about 4 hours ago

Is it even possible to steal this code? How much of it is uncopyrightable LLM output?

mam2•about 1 hour ago

I do not believe in IP.

Credit should be assigned tho.

harshavamsi•about 11 hours ago

https://github.com/google/artemis/commit/371aa6df56880643da5...

They're trying to cover it up now

jimrandomh•about 11 hours ago

That's not "trying to cover it up", that's a link to them adding credits that were missing, which is the main corrective action to get into compliance with the source project's license.

m00x•about 11 hours ago

> We opened Google’s Artemis repository and recognised code we had written for mobile-use. Then we found our names in its history—and the change that removed them.

Did you read the post? They originally removed all traces of minitap and its contributors, and only added it back when they were called out.

topato•about 11 hours ago

Hahaha adding credit… after that credit had already existed, then been removed and the history of its removal spirited away?

Yeah, they’re totally being forthright. /s

For the amount of money Google’s engineers are paid, I expect you guys to be able to tell your manager when you’ve used OSS code, since you already have a proven worth to the software engineering ecosystem as a whole… that’s why you’re a googler. If you’re too afraid to make sure attribution is properly documented, perhaps due to your only engineering knowledge centering around basic understanding of VCSs, then perhaps you’re not yet ready for the high-stakes lifestyle of a Fortune 50 Engineer.

rkagerer•about 11 hours ago

Is that a coverup - eg. are they retroactively rewriting old comments - or are they simply jumping on this and trying to correct the problem?

(Although I would say it isn't a very good-faith effort to address the issue if they don't put back the author attributions they removed).

SillyUsername•about 11 hours ago

They've so far ignored the ticket https://github.com/google/artemis/issues/40 to potentially avoid the Streisand Effect (drawing attention to it), yet started work fixing it.

That reads like a coverup as open discourse would have admitted a mea culpa and apology.

I predict they will close the issue without discussion, citing this PR as the fix, potentially associating the fix with a less guilty looking duplicate ticket.

I'd like to be wrong but this is what other commercial projects do when they are called out on a shady practice.

lunchbucket•about 11 hours ago

And if they had instead chosen to remain silent on the origin of the code, how would you have characterized their actions then?

m00x•about 11 hours ago

They only did it because minitap called them out? It's in the post.

They were in clear violation of Apache 2.0

lunchbucket•about 1 hour ago

Obviously, and they deserve no credit for the bare minimum. But if you imagine them doing the opposite and not taking any steps to rectify the error, that would clearly be closer to a "coverup".

bilekas•about 11 hours ago

Well I am shocked, who would have thought, an advertising company who prides themselves on not being evil, used code that wasn't credited. I mean, if that's the case, we better start a revolution.

pmkary•about 12 hours ago

When you say "don't be evil"; just where is your threshold Google?

dietr1ch•about 11 hours ago

Not around since 2015, and desperately needed since around 2018-2019 with those military contracts and silos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

dataflow•about 11 hours ago

> Not around since 2015

> "but retained it in the last sentence"

cortesoft•about 12 hours ago

They removed that years ago.

de6u99er•about 11 hours ago

I'd like to know how many imposters work in big tech.

RossBencina•about 11 hours ago

Flagging because the title here on HN is editorializing. The actual page title is "I expected better from Google"

I was going to comment on the title's perpetuation of big IPs stealing/theft meme but it turns out that TFA did not use those words.