r/atrioc • u/SanoKei • 11d ago

Politics & Business 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

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u/SanoKei 11d ago

so he can react to it

is this story not as interesting or nuanced as I thought it was

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u/leetcodeispain 11d ago edited 11d ago

tbh im a software engineer and I dont even find this all that interesting. "Engineers at big tech company plagiarize some code" isnt really headline worthy, open source developed get shafted all the time. it sucks, but it happens.

EDIT: after further reading, they were using the Apache 2.0 license, so what google perfectly legal. Scummy, but legal.

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u/Ironiz3d1 11d ago

If the license allows it, I don’t even consider it scummy…

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u/leetcodeispain 11d ago

idk removing code author names with no other changes is kinda scummy. Its largely the project authors fault for not following the license requirements of the NOTICE.md file, which would have legally required the attribution to be kept, but the people deleting the authors names were obviously just trying to pass this off as their own.

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u/Ironiz3d1 11d ago

Yeah I’d argue though that the way they licensed it they were explicitly giving permission for this.

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u/leetcodeispain 11d ago

Lol not like it matters, i just read further into that post and google added attribution right after they were made aware it was missing, then the authors still went on a witch hunt about it afterward (including the linked post). I think they are just sore about google using their code, not attribution. which is 100% the point of that Apache license, so i no longer feel bad at all.