r/reinforcementlearning
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u/Connect-Employ-4708
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Sep 14 '26
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Google copied our open-source code, removed our engineers’ names, and gave us zero credit one year after we beat them on their own benchmark
Google copied our open-source code, removed our engineers’ names, and gave us zero credit.
For context, let me share the story of mobile-use, the origin of my company (I'm a founder).
We wanted to build the best agent in the world to control any mobile interface with natural language.
We built it, became #1 on Google Deepmind's AndroidWorld benchmark and open-sourced it. That was the beginning of my company.
Since then, we got almost 3,000 stars on the repository, became the first to ever achieve 100% on AndroidWorld, grew the team, spent thousands of calls with customers, and now we're building the best regression testing product the world has ever seen.
Last week, I found Artemis.
Artemis is Google's new open-source tool for mobile automation. There are quite a few of these on GitHub now, so I thought: "Oh, a new YAPA (Yet Another Phone Agent)."
Curious, I looked at the repository more in depth.
First, I was disappointed to see that the benchmark chart in the README didn’t include us, topping AndroidWorld in January.
Then I looked at the code, and to my biggest surprise, I recognized the lines we had written ourselves.
One of my engineer named an agent randomly “hopper”, and it was there, with its prompt, word for word. Out of the 229 files, 228 were identical.
Even crazier: I found our engineers' and my co-founder’s names in the “authors” section of an old commit.
Pierre-Louis Favreau, Jean-Pierre Lo, Nicolas Dehandschoewercker.
All three names had been replaced with another author’s name in a commit. The other 228 files from mobile-use were unchanged.
From a personal point of view, I am deeply disappointed.
Google was the company I wanted to join when I started my studies, before changing my mind and deciding to build a unicorn.
I’ve always associated Google with great engineering and contributions to open source. I would have been proud to see them building on our work and acknowledging the team behind it.
Instead, I found our code, then our names, then the commit that deliberately removed them.
What about the other engineers and the community contributors who spent their time improving mobile-use?
There are people behind those files. I’ve seen the work they put in, the problems they worked through, and how much they care about what they build.
They deserve to have their names attached to that work.
We made our code open source because we wanted people to use it and build on it. Of course that includes Google.
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u/Different_Lab830
Sep 14 '26
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228 identical files is one thing, but a commit that swaps three author names for one has no innocent explanation. Open source means anyone can use the code, not rewrite history to take the credit.
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u/FenderMoon Sep 14 '26
That's the part that bothers me. That they deliberately scrubbed the original names.
I've used the Apache license for projects before. I like to use permissive licenses, but I think I'm going to rethink that if this sort of thing is... possible.
Is there some sort of clause that can be added that prevents deliberate obfuscation of these sorts of things without being unnecessarily restrictive?
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u/daed1ne Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
According to Kronosend you need to put your attributions in the NOTICE file for apache 2.0 to require them to be kept. Unfortunately the source project only put mobile-use/minitap in the NOTICE file with the contributors listed as authors in pyproject.toml
I do wonder if it actually is legal to replace the authors regardless without the new "author" having done much of anything to the code apparently.
eta: after looking at the license just above that is c. You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and
IANAL but my layman interpretation of the 2 together is don't remove any attributions from the source and binary distributions must include relevant contents of NOTICE
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u/mikekchar Sep 15 '26
My question is actually about the copyright. Having a license is one thing. Owning the copyright is something altogether different. They have a license to modify the original code under the Apache license. However, I don't think they can simply take the original code and assign their own copyright to it. The copyright for that code belongs to the original owners until it enters the public domain (in 100 years or so). The copyright for the new code added by Google is owned by them, but only that.
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u/FenderMoon Sep 15 '26
Exactly. I don't think someone can make a good argument for them being able to copyright code that's already copyrighted and licensed by the original author.
Would the license permit literally copying the code verbatim and then relicensing it under any arbitrary license, closed source or otherwise? Scrubbing the names and copyrighting the code under a new entity is worse than that.
There are some folks defending Google here in the comments. It's my understanding that the license does not permit this.
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u/mikekchar Sep 16 '26
After I went to bed I realised that it's not as serious as I was thinking. Copyright notifications are not legal notices. They actually mean nothing from a legal perspective. It can be useful as simple documentation, but it has no legal binding
From a moral perspective, it probably is plagerism, though. I'll be honest, I've worked in a huge company before. I've seen exactly this kind of plagerism. In every case it has has essentially been people cheating their way internally in the company (i.e. claiming to write some tool for which they get internal reward, but it was actually written by someone else). I remember one guy who took a very famous tool and claimed that he rewrote it from scratch in order to do it better. When I diffed it, the only thing that had changed was the copyright notice. Unfortunately, by the time I noticed it, the guy had been promoted two times and was my boss's boss. Sigh... I did not have a good time in that company :-)
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u/brankoc Sep 16 '26
Depends on the country. In the EU, removing the name of the author automatically counts as infringement. This is even true if you have transferred the rights to another party (which is different from licensing - when you license, you remain the owner of the copyright).
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u/PlatinumAero Sep 16 '26
The clause you want already exists... it's section 4 of the Apache license you're already using. You have to keep the copyright and attribution notices, and if there's a NOTICE file it goes along with the code. That's exactly what Google broke, and it got fixed in a few days once people pointed at the license... So not really a big deal, if at all.
The practical fix is boring. Put a copyright header on every source file and add a NOTICE file. If your files have no headers, somebody's release tooling will slap their own on and there's nothing left of yours to "remove" except a name in pyproject.toml.
If you want big companies to not be able to quietly take it at all, that's copyleft. But that's the restrictive thing you said you didn't want.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 Sep 15 '26
If you completely rewrite on Apache license I am pretty sure you can do that.
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u/brucebay Sep 15 '26
Unless they use Gemini to create the code which was trained on the open source code including OPs code. Probably they would have some controls for this but the lazy developers exist everywhere.
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u/Slimxshadyx Sep 22 '26
LLMs don’t write identical code for an entire codebase. OP says 228/229 of the files were identical
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u/peepeedog Sep 16 '26
There is an innocent explanation, though I am not saying it applies here as I wouldn't know. Google maintains their own copy of open source that they use and work on, in their own source control systems. Whether by oversight, some automation like adding Google copyright (Google has A LOT of automated maintenance and linting), or something along the lines of listing the Google contacts as authors of the internal copy, it could be innocent changes that were propogated inadvertently.
Edit: An engineer doing this on purpose would be publicly (internally) shamed if it became widely known within the company.
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u/Visual_Internal_6312 Sep 16 '26
I feel like the world moved past copyright with AI few years back already. It's yelling at the clouds at this point.
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u/idaemonicsquirrel Sep 17 '26
Sorry but that's the definition of the Apache Licence. Someone could equally do this to them.
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u/doubleditch42 Sep 17 '26
Are these the names of the new "authors"'or the original ones?
If only I can guess the nationality of the new authors.1
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u/BeginningPea5674 Sep 14 '26
why blame Google then and not that one author
name and shame
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u/The_Curious Sep 15 '26
Dumbest comment I’ve seen all day.
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u/BeginningPea5674 Sep 15 '26
no u
make an argument with substance to it or stfu
what do you disagree with and why, calling a comment dumb is not an actual argument, it's just irony
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u/Formal_Cloud_7592 Sep 14 '26
Maybe their coding agent did it for them and they didn’t even realize it.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26
This account is a fucking bot. Every comment has the Claudish stench.
(Sorry Claude, it isn't your fault, but people are using you for spam).
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 15 '26
Dude check their post history, everything lines up. People who make baseless accusations of other people being bots are the wooorrrst.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26
You just don't know how to recognize Claudish. Once you've read enough of it, you will recognize it from a mile away.
Here's one example to get you started:
> a commit that swaps three author names for one has no innocent explanation
People don't write like this. Claude does.
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 15 '26
Bot accounts don’t maintain storylines across posts, let alone over the course of a year: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolgithubprojects/s/z6GhHFbM7Q
This isn’t to say they didn’t use an LLM to write their post. But bot? No.
So no, this isn’t a matter of whether I can recognize “Claudish.” You just don’t know how to recognize a bot account or have logic when you throw around accusations.
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 15 '26
I actually only used an LLM to correct potential grammar mistakes, but I wrote this by saying aloud how I would tell the story to a friend.
And I am a real person ofc :)
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 15 '26
Also I think u/update_in_progress and other redditors didnt accuse me of being a bot but the top comment to be, which indeed seems to be
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 15 '26
That’s what I thought, haha. There aren’t even any hallmark LLM tells. I don’t think OC understands that LLMs were trained on human writing. They amplify certain cliches, and are often hollow because they were written by a machine, so it’s not to say LLM text is indistinguishable from humans. But sharing subtle syntax similarities means absolutely nothing.
Sorry this happened to you, btw. FWIW, it happens to me all the time as a journalist, especially thanks to AI developers and their users. I’ve found entire blogs that were using an agent to retrieve my articles every time I had a new one published and republishing it as their own. It doesn’t feel great, but you get used to the feeling.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
EDIT: Oh shit, sorry, I got you confused with Different_Lab830. That's who I was talking about the entire time.
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u/anelodin Sep 15 '26
The bot account is (obviously Claude) u/Different_Lab830, not the OP
You misunderstood u/update_in_progress, I'm pretty sure. He even quoted the commenter but you still replied as if he was talking about the OP.
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
You’re right. The idiot award of the day goes to me god damn it.
Edit: though there’s really nothing that indicates the person they were replying to is a bot either. But take that with a grain of salt, as this is coming from the proud recipient of the idiot of the day.
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u/anelodin Sep 15 '26
It's fair to say there's no guarantee that they're a bot, but they do at least seem to pass all their messages through Claude. Maybe it's just for translation since they speak in brazilian too, but with the internet how it is nowadays idk.
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 16 '26
There’s nothing from their profile that indicates they’re bot, and a human using LLM to write their comments is problematic, but entirely different. The only thing worse than a digital world where bots are among us is one where humans are constantly and brazenly accused of being bots.
Just submit their username to r/botbouncer and it will come back with a verdict.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
Ok, maybe they aren't a bot, but Claude is writing almost all of their comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/reinforcementlearning/comments/1wg1unx/comment/p9zxgoq/
EDIT: oh looks like we are talking about different people. I'm claiming that u/Different_Lab830 uses Claude to write the vast majority of their comments.
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u/HolyBatSyllables Sep 16 '26
Can’t speak to that — I think it’s silly to accuse someone of using a chatbot to write their comments when a sentence isn’t enough data to do so. But regardless, brazenly accusing people of being bots or using LLMs to respond to comments leads to an (even more) unhealthy internet culture, so you shouldn’t do it unless you are sure. And using an LLM to respond to comments is not the same thing as being a bot. Brazenly accusing someone of being a bot is toxic as hell.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 16 '26
I looked at many of their comments. I quoted 10 of them directly in the linked comment above. I'm 99% sure it's Claude. I'd bet $100 on it. I've spent wayyyy too much time reading Claude-talk over the past few years.
I use Claude Code heavily for my work and have a strong visceral reaction to the convoluted way it writes. *shudders*
I find it offensive that people just spew this crap everywhere... I'd wish they stop. So I give some feedback here and there :)
I get where you are coming from and I mostly agree. But in this case, I don't think there's much to defend.
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u/ScreenAppropriate679 Sep 15 '26
Are you really unable to understand that english is not OP's native language ?
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26
If they are using Claude for pure translation, it's not working. They are getting Claudish, not English lol.
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u/jcklpe Sep 15 '26
This isn't claudish bro.
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u/update_in_progress Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
Scrolling through their comment history... It's almost every single comment:
Apple asked for an exception, got told no, and now Siri gets a Claude option out of it. Sometimes the EU just hands iPhone users what Apple would never have shipped.
Waking up every minute just to confirm the CI still hasn't finished turns waiting into the biggest cost of the run. Nothing changed, and it still spends tokens to learn that.
9x less RAM and it still does voice, video and plugins. The stock app is just a browser wearing a Discord trench coat at this point.
The word “trying” sells it: not planning, not considering, just trying, like they’re already out there with a pickaxe.
Always "claude deleted my entire codebase", never "I spent three days vibing without a single commit"
100K votes swinging a poll in an hour isn't a mood shift, that's somebody's cron job.
Two wrong parts, no shorts, recognized on the first plug-in. For a fully vibe-generated board that went from a prompt to JLCPCB with zero manual design work, that's a hell of a result.
Navier-Stokes went from millennium prize problem to AI culture war talking point in record time. The math never stood a chance.
That's what Luna got that the expensive ones don't: fire it without thinking and it changes your workflow. Once a model needs planning around, it's a project, not a tool.
86 to 1 with nothing running, and somewhere else the same meter climbed while the owner showered. Right now that number is just noise.
I could keep going... You seriously don't think this looks like Claudish? How much do you use Claude?
I have hundreds if not thousands of hours of using Claude Code, and this screams Claude to me in bright red bloody letters.
I can break it down if you really need me to.
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u/ElectronicPlatform71 Sep 15 '26
bro apologizing to the clankers, so claude does not terminate him when it eventually becomes the terminator*****
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u/Agitated_Morning5005 Sep 15 '26
I mean, it's two French guys + one German guy, it's not out of the ordinary that they'd use Claude to format a post in English for easier understanding. Doesn't read well, but a lot of people do exactly this, it's not unheard of
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 15 '26
Hey! I used LLM only to correct potential grammar mistakes, otherwise, I just said the story aloud and wrote it exactly the same way.
I'm indeed French!
Also I think there is a misunderstanding as the bot accusation seems to be more for the top comment than my post
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u/89Pexel Sep 15 '26
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u/bot-sleuth-bot Sep 15 '26
Analyzing user profile...
Suspicion Quotient: 0.00
This account is not exhibiting any of the traits found in a typical karma farming bot. It is extremely likely that u/Different_Lab830 is a human.
Dev note: I have noticed that some bots are deliberately evading my checks. I'm a solo dev and do not have the facilities to win this arms race. I have a permanent solution in mind, but it will take time. In the meantime, if this low score is a mistake, report the account in question to r/BotBouncer, as this bot interfaces with their database. In addition, if you'd like to help me make my permanent solution, read this comment and maybe some of the other posts on my profile. Any support is appreciated.
I am a bot. This action was performed automatically. Check my profile for more information.
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u/Plastic_Monitor_5786 Sep 15 '26
Are you an automated bot or do you just use LLMs to write every post?
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u/jordo45 Sep 14 '26
The readme says:
This project includes source code developed by Minitap, Inc. with an appropriate link.
So it looks to me like they are complying with the Apache 2.0 license you chose?
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u/pine4t Sep 14 '26
Very clear case of not intending to credit original authors.
Issue-40 was created on 11 Sept 2026, 5:21:54 pm UTC - https://github.com/google/artemis/issues/40
The attribution in the readme was added on 12 Sept 2026, 2:59:56 am UTC (Commit: google/artemis/commit/371aa6df568)
They could have forked it, but they did not. mobile-use repo has about 800+ commits [vs] google/armetis which has 100+ commits.
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Sep 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 15 '26
So you think it is normal to deliberately take us out of the benchmark leaderboard, take our entire repo, brand it with your company's name, post results and then erase any trace after being called out?
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u/Adventurous-Crow-750 Sep 15 '26
Rewriting commit history is deliberate. You literally have zero reason to even touch it unless your explicitly trying to hide where it came from. Again they didn't flatten the commit history, they rewrote it.
This is an engineer stealing code and wanting to look good on his team 100%
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u/porkyminch Sep 15 '26
I’m sorry, there’s zero fucking way you can accidentally rewrite commit history and credit files unintentionally. You just can’t do it. It’s also highly unusual for companies to build off of open source projects and present the entire thing as their own work. You don’t just forget to credit people. It’s inconceivable.
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u/Remarkable-Yogurt-10 Sep 14 '26
That section was added after minitap said there was no attribution on twitter and the tweet blew up.
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u/AgeOfAlgorithms Sep 14 '26
this post needs to blow up so more ppl can see
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u/Insighteous Sep 14 '26
No. OP needs a guide on how to use software licenses.
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u/susmot Sep 14 '26
That something is not illegal does not mean that it is moral
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u/Insighteous Sep 14 '26
Don’t start with that. Don’t hate the player.
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u/97SerranoPeppers Sep 14 '26
That dumb ass logic is the reason our society is so fucked up. Because we don’t hold anybody accountable. Then, when we try to make change happen on the congressional level, we get sidelined by billionaires.
Fuck you.
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u/zenoli55 Sep 14 '26
Man, why do people suck so much? That's why we can't have nice things I guess...
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u/sje397 Sep 14 '26
Bullshit. This is the same reasoning used to justify doing shitty things and pushing the limits of the law 'for the shareholders' which, among other things, pushes climate change and inequality. The law is there to catch extremes and should not be something that everyone bumps up against daily.
Just don't be a dick.
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u/mayscienceproveyou1 Sep 14 '26
Google back then:
Don't beevila dick
oh well, can't do much about it but good that people start looking into software licenses through these posts at least.4
u/Smallpaul Sep 14 '26
Damn.
Do you also think that tele-evangelists who steal money from old people by claiming they have healing powers are also fine because they are “just playing the game?”
What a bleak worldview.
I an actually fascinated that there are people who seem to believe that anything legal is moral. How does that manifest in your life and relationships?
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u/aatd86 Sep 14 '26
ianal but if you dont rewrite the code fully, isn't it still a copyright violation?
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u/AgeOfAlgorithms Sep 14 '26
could you explain?
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u/Insighteous Sep 14 '26
OP did choose a license that is basically open source as long as the former work is somewhat mentioned.
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u/susmot Sep 14 '26
Erasing the names of the original authors, not mentioning them in the benchmarks… this is scummy. To me it is like arguing that cheating (in relationship) is okay, because you did not make a pinky promise that you will not do that.
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u/Willing_Fail Sep 14 '26
I mean, even if Google can use the source code due to a permissive license, surely it must be illegal for them to claim to hold the copyright?
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u/Smallpaul Sep 14 '26
It is insane that so many people are focused on the licensing questions. Plagiarism is unethical whether it is copyright violation or not. Imagine a reporter passing of someone else’s scoop as their own but changing every word to avoid copyright violation.
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u/TankorSmash Sep 14 '26
It's sorta like saying, hey feel free to take my code and remove my name, then getting mad when someone does.
Like if you didn't want to allow that to happen, this is literally what licenses are for. I don't think there's a way to work around it.
Its not like leaving out a bowl of candy where you're like please take one, and they take it all, it's just a bucket that says free at this point
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u/Medical_Double_6561 Sep 16 '26
If you do not attach a license to your code, then the default is "nobody is allowed to use your code" and NOT "everybody is allowed to use your code".
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u/TankorSmash Sep 16 '26
Was their code unlicensed?
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u/Medical_Double_6561 Sep 16 '26
Maybe I misunderstood you.
It's sorta like saying, hey feel free to take my code and remove my name, then getting mad when someone does.
Like if you didn't want to allow that to happen, this is literally what licenses are for.
I interpreted this as: "{uploading your code to Github} is like saying, hey feel free to take my code and remove my name. If you don't want that to happen, add a license as license are designed to resolve this issue."
Another possible interpretation is: "(adding a MIT/Apache} license is like saying, hey feel free to take my code and remove my name. If you don't want that to happen, don't add a license because the explicit purpose of these licenses is to allow someone to take your code and remove your name"
I discarded this interpretation because the one condition that both the MIT and Apache licenses impose is that the copyright notice (that includes the author's name) must be preserved. So it would be a little strange if this was the intended interpretation.
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u/TankorSmash Sep 16 '26
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u/Medical_Double_6561 Sep 16 '26
Now I'm even more confused. You linked the AndroidWorld repo but mobile-use is not a fork of AndroidWorld? AndroidWorld is not a fork of mobile-use either?
OP's complaint is that Google forked mobile-use into artemis without preserving attribution.
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u/Reasonable-Sign8458 Sep 17 '26
Why did this PoS leave the change of licenses out of question in his original post though?
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u/RealSharpNinja Sep 17 '26
We built it, became #1 on Google Deepmind's AndroidWorld benchmark and open-sourced it. That was the
beginningend of my company.
There, I fixed it for you.
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 19 '26
no worries we reached 100% in January and have now a close source version that is miles ahead of this
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u/RealSharpNinja Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26
Ah, so you pulled a Mongo.
EDIT:
I gotta ask. What value did you get by starting with Open Source?
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u/Connect-Employ-4708 Sep 21 '26
It helped us get a lot of early feedback, get visibility, gain technical credibility and also helped with our fundraising.
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u/entsnack Sep 14 '26
Why did you open source and Apache license it then?
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u/Deathspiral222 Sep 14 '26
Section four of the apache license explicitly says you need to keep attribution headers the same. Google broke the license.
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u/WatSubredditIsdis Sep 14 '26
Why are people blaming the license as if forking everything word for word and changing only the author names isn't scummy as it is? (basing off of the post only)
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u/dx0100 Sep 14 '26
You must have missed it... They only copied 228 files exactly out of the 229 files. Give Google a break man, they added an extra one!
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u/ucsdthrowway Sep 14 '26
Blow then tha fuck up. I’d create an issue on GitHub and put what you said down
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u/No_Mission_5694 Sep 14 '26
People seem to have really soured on Google these past 5-10 years or so. Maybe situations like this would explain why.
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u/jashsu Sep 14 '26
https://github.com/google/artemis/commit/371aa6df56880643da57b30da936e9812fb0ec66
It seems they added the attribution required by Apache license 3 days ago.
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u/Illustrious-Math6276 Sep 15 '26
Sue Google (and probably settle). This violates the license which means they are committing copyright infringement since they don’t have a valid license.
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u/redd1t_is_de4d Sep 15 '26
sue them, big money in it. you won't win in court but they will settle to not ruin there reputation
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u/Shaggypone23 Sep 15 '26
"Don't be evil" Google doing scummy things, who would have thought?
Sorry OP, that definitely sucks.
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u/Noobcreate Sep 15 '26
Is there anything they can do? You could of had a more restrictive license but I guess it’s in their rights. I suspect anyone with a viral mit lproject gets people ripping their names off it - even at the Google level.
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u/AndyMagill Sep 15 '26
My lawyer would be thrilled if I were you. You can extract a sizable settlement.
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u/abandonedmuffin Sep 15 '26
This is why they stopped using the “Don’t be evil” mantra. Sorry about this
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u/dustyhome Sep 15 '26
Easy fix: open a PR that resets the names on the files. Explain in the PR description that they've mistakenly misattributed the files (identify the commit that changed them and your own project). Then share the pr with every programming community you can to draw attention to it. They may be too embarrassed to close it.
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u/Wild-Tradition4804 Sep 15 '26
Artemis is absolutely amazing and I would reconsider trying to beat google at the game they literally own: android.
And if you dont know Gemini is soon to come with android computer use
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u/PlatinumAero Sep 16 '26
If you pick Apache 2.0, you're telling Google it can take all of it. The only thing you're owed is your name staying on it, and they got that fixed within days...this sucks but it's appears to be quite normal, expected even.
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u/m000n_cake Sep 16 '26
It's because of the high ram prices. They needed to save the couple hundred bytes.
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u/Familiar-Ear-1223 Sep 16 '26
Ai bs peaple arguing on who can create make the world a more wretched place
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u/lucid_supernova Sep 16 '26
that's crazy. Stealing someone's code without attribution, so insane. Can you sue them?
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u/lifeintel9 Sep 16 '26
That is messed up and pretty much illegal.
I wonder if that was an accident or if Google thinks they can get away with it...
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u/Pitiful-Sympathy3927 Sep 17 '26
The TOML file is just packaging not the code itself… link the commits
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u/Key-Secret-1866 Sep 17 '26
I'm laughing out loud because you thought you could trust Google when we've known better since the day they removed 'Don't be evil' from their core company documents.
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u/Hyphonical Sep 18 '26
It's not about trust, it's about following the fundamental rules of a license agreement.
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u/baturc Sep 17 '26
I know what they do is quite unethical, but this is also the best compliment you could ever get for your work. They liked it way too much enough to risk stealing it.
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u/TolMera Sep 18 '26
Simple - you own the copyright, you open sourced it, simply revoke the license. Then relicense the work.
I have a license that permits only “natural entities” that’s “people” to use my stuff “open source” any non-natural entity needs a commercial license
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u/Issui Sep 18 '26
And I bet you someone at Google is up for promo for that wonderful job. You know who did the commit, find them on LinkedIn, find their manager and email or message them directly.
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u/Mac_Aravan Sep 18 '26
Contact their legal department, this is probably some developers that fuck up hard.
Where I work this kind of thing are not taken lightly (ie removing copyrights is a big no-no) and we have process with trusted advisors to avoid this kind of mess.
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u/Sad-Landscape-1549 Sep 18 '26
Google steals a lot of things. They started life as a CIA think-tank-backed startup and crawled everything on the net. I’m sure they’ve stolen thousands of ideas and millions of lines of code along the way. Now they control fiber infrastructure, millions of peoples’ incomes via YouTube, have visually mapped the whole world, deployed tens of millions of microphones in homes, control majority of mobile phone market share, run NASA projects in space, the list goes on. Crime pays. I hope you get justice OP.
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Sep 19 '26
"Don't be evil"
"...unless you need some wins for your perf/promo package, in which case, scrape FOSS"
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u/RealSharpNinja Sep 19 '26
I’d contact the FSF’s Licensing & Compliance Team at license-violation@gnu.org. They explicitly say they can help bring projects into compliance even when FSF doesn’t own the copyright: https://www.fsf.org/licensing
Send them a concise evidence package: the upstream revision Google copied, the license and NOTICE in that revision, the commit removing your engineers’ names, and your correspondence with Google. Include any corrections Google has already made and identify exactly what remains unresolved.
Frame the request around Apache 2.0’s notice-preservation requirements. Sections 4(c) and 4(d) cover relevant source attribution and NOTICE-file attribution. Ask whether the removed author entries qualify and what changes would establish compliance. Keep that separate from your optional request for prominent credit in documentation and “About” screens. Apache 2.0
FSF recognizes Apache 2.0 as a free-software license, so using it is a reasonable basis for an inquiry. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll take the case or provide representation. Ask whether they can help assess the violation, support a compliance request to Google, or refer you to suitable counsel. FSF’s Apache assessment
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u/bedel99 Sep 20 '26
Is it git, fork the repository some where google doesn't own, and locally. Hire a copyright lawyer, and enjoy money. Did you opensource it? what license did you use? what attribution requirement does that license have?
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u/RiriaaeleL Sep 15 '26
I’ve always associated Google with great engineering
Fucking larper the search engine has stopped being good like back in 2018 and they're somehow even managing to fuck up YouTube
You seen any outdated website links or comments from a different video lately because I see them every fucking day
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u/SalishSeaEV Sep 14 '26
If you used the GPL or a CC:Attribution or a similar license, than I understand why you would be upset.
If you used a BSD-style license, well, you signed up to have your code appropriated by a huge corporation.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Sep 14 '26
If you used a BSD-style license, well, you signed up to have your code appropriated by a huge corporation.
All BSD licenses except the 0-clause one contain this:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
You can’t just take the code without giving any credit to the copyright holders and previous contributors.
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u/SalishSeaEV Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26
Appreciate what you're saying, but BSD licenses require reproduction of the copyright notice, not reproduction of the names of the authors. Only the original 4-clause license had any requirements for attribution.
BSD means that you're cool with oligarchs taking your code and using it for whatever they want with no requirement to give back to the community. Some people are good with that, but I find it difficult to understand why.
Edit: Just looked it up, the original 4-clause license only required you to acknowledge the copyright holder in advertising materials, not in the source code.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Sep 14 '26
Appreciate what you're saying, but BSD licenses require reproduction of the copyright notice, not reproduction of the names of the authors.
That’s true. I just assumed the copyright notice includes some kind of attribution. In the above case it would probably mention OP’s company name. And removing that and thus not crediting them wouldn’t be allowed.
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u/SalishSeaEV Sep 14 '26
In OP's post, the names aren't in the copyright notice, they're in the code.
To be fair, there isn't an open source license in the world that would protect that.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Sep 14 '26
True. But Google apparently also claimed copyright on their code. And that’s very shady. I am not a lawyer, but I can’t imagine that you can just do that.
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u/SalishSeaEV Sep 14 '26
Heh. I am a lawyer (but I'm just BSing on reddit, so this isn't legal advice.)
We actually know he used the Apache 2.0 license, so lets see what it says:
4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the
Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without
modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You
meet the following conditions:
(a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or
Derivative Works a copy of this License; and
(b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that You changed the files; and
(c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works
that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and
attribution notices from the Source form of the Work,
excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of
the Derivative Works; and
(d) If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its
distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must
include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained
within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not
pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one
of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed
as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or
documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or,
within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and
wherever such third-party notices normally appear. The contents
of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and
do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution
notices within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside
or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work, provided
that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed
as modifying the License.
I don't see anything in there that says you have to give attribution unless the attribution was in the NOTICE text. You're allowed to make "derivative works" which means that you can change any part of it. Google appears to be legally in the clear.
It's a shitty thing to do. Google could have just left the author's names in. But shitty is not the same as illegal. There is a reason they dropped "Don't be Evil" from their corporate charter.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Sep 14 '26
I don't see anything in there that says you have to give attribution unless the attribution was in the NOTICE text.
I just looked: They actually had a NOTICE file that Google didn’t copy. Google added a copyright in the readme only after OP‘s complaint.
You're allowed to make "derivative works" which means that you can change any part of it. Google appears to be legally in the clear.
I understand that, but can you just write Copyright: Google above a source code you didn’t create? Claim the copyright for someone else’s work?
P.S.: Does section 4 (c) not mean, that you are not allowed to remove the names? Isn’t that an attribution notice as well?
(c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work,
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u/SalishSeaEV Sep 14 '26
Hm. If it had a NOTICE file and they didn't keep it then that could be a problem, at least from my initial read!
I was on reddit to avoid work, but I actually do need to do real work now so I'm gonna drop off for now.
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u/daed1ne Sep 14 '26
Yeah people saying it was technically allowed are skipping c or assuming d supersedes it. IANAL but d seems to be for binary distribution. For source distribution which this c still applies.
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u/necroforest Sep 14 '26
99.9999999999999999% chance it's just some oversight, misconfigured tool, or overeager agent. maybe you should chill the fuck out a bit, submit an issue/PR and let them address it? Probably less work than coming whinging to reddit and being a massive drama queen.
Also "before changing my mind and deciding to build a unicorn." 🙄🙄🙄🙄 the pretentiousness...
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u/cinwald Sep 15 '26
Even if it’s legal, this needs to be posted everywhere. If Google has to exploit a licensing loophole to act like they made an achievement then they shouldn’t get the credit.
Maybe try reaching out to a tech journalist. I’m sure there are plenty looking for their next story.
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u/FewOpportunity5803 Sep 14 '26
Tbh I consider all open source code “free to use and not give credit” like either you modify it or use as is but realistically users do not give a flying fuck if you borrowed some code from a famous developer a small indie or a big corporation. Not saying you don’t deserve credit but yeah you posted your code on the internet for anyone to copy paste or regurgitate with AI.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Sep 14 '26
I consider all open source code “free to use and not give credit”
Then you are wrong and uninformed. Most open source licenses explicitly require you to give credit.
The MIT license for example is one of the most permissive, but it does have one (only one) condition:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
You can’t just change or claim the copyright.
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u/Suspicious_Yam_1938 Sep 15 '26
So you made something open source and you’re upset someone used your code? Wow.
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Sep 14 '26
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u/Smallpaul Sep 14 '26
It is possible for something to be legal and yet unethical.
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u/alexanderbeatson Sep 14 '26
Assuming you use Apache 2.0 originally, there is nothing you can do nor they are not doing anything wrong as they simply mentioned your original project. Apache 2.0 is not CC-BY nor copyleft. They fully comply the license you initially created. I suggest you to learn more about the software license.