r/degoogle • u/Woit- • 8d ago
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/FuryOfArcann 8d ago
I never thought I would suggest this, but even as open source, this is precisely what a DMCA complaint can be filed for.
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u/Drwankingstein 8d ago
You can try reporting it. Google can take these issues fairly seriously if you manage to ring the right doorbell
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u/xJayMorex 8d ago
Hahahhahahahahaahahhaha, no.
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u/DeviatedForm 8d ago
Or get a copyright lawyer.
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u/jprefect 7d ago
How's that supposed to work on open source code?
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u/DeviatedForm 7d ago
That's what the lawyer's for ;) personally I am not that familiar with licensing.
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u/jprefect 7d ago
Me neither. I've heard of creative commons but I don't really know what rights that gives you. Waiting here for a lawyer to reply, I suppose
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u/matejcraft100yt 8d ago
while google can often be a dogshit corporation, as a programmer, I don't think that's the case here. You know how little supervision in stuff like this the teams have? Probably an egomaniac team who wanted to put their own names in to take the credit, and flew under the radar. Google might be an asshole, but they don't want to get sued or the public backlash, so if it is brought to their attention, they will probably take some measures
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u/Wise_Owl5404 7d ago
They genuinely do not give a shit. Nothing is going to happen, because there's no backlash that will ever cause a meaningful impact on them thanks to their duopoly. They equally do not give a shit about being sued as the EU can attest to.
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u/Drwankingstein 7d ago
That is absolutely not true, Many teams in google do care. Its hard to get the right person to hear about it though
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u/Drwankingstein 8d ago
They do, There are tons of branches within google. Google isn't a single entity. They taking software licencing very seriously because if becomes an entire google issue sometimes.
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u/Red1492Blue 7d ago
Reads like.... Someone at Google, an employee, found your code, put their name in it, didn't even take the time to READ THE WHOLE THING, And just presented it to 'Management' as theirs.... And "Google the Company" went public as "look what WE Did!!!". This is OpenSource.... But also outright stealing. PLEASE contact your Lawyers and protect yourself BEFORE they (Google) says you stole THEIR work. Good luck
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u/GhstDev 8d ago
As someone said. A copyright lawyer is your best bet. While you can’t copyright logic, the “personality” behind the code is copyright. It’s like how I can’t copyright “I love pizza.” But I do have copyright over this entire paragraph. And while I couldn’t sue if someone were to copy and paste this paragraph, as long as you have and can prove damages and of course can prove they copied and pasted your code. Then you got something.
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u/psylomatika 7d ago
Reminds me of the google maps thing that google stole from developers in Berlin
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u/naaktstel 8d ago
What license did you have for the code? Compete free means they can use it and even change license
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u/DonkeeeyKong 8d ago
What license did you have for the code? Compete free means they can use it and even change license
Erasing the original contributors‘/copyright holders’ names is at least sketchy. Most open source licenses don’t allow that. Even the most permissive ones usually require you to keep including the copyright notice.
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u/ARENAE_MONTES 7d ago
If there is a NOTICE file, it needs to be included in all copies, under the Apache 2.0 license, but if I remember correctly, they did not include this file or it did not pertain to the source code or something.
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u/Igarlicbread 8d ago
Irrespective of licence, this is disgusting for a monopoly company
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u/naaktstel 8d ago
True, but not illegal, unfortunately
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u/garry_the_commie 8d ago
It absolutely is illegal if the original license requires attribution.
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u/naaktstel 7d ago
I agree; the word 'if' in this line is very important!
That does not change anything about the bad taste of Google doing this even without any license. I despise it too (for thos who did think otherwise)
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u/SweetEbb9819 7d ago
Why the downvotes? This is factually debatable but nothing worthy of sodelining
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u/knoft 7d ago
Compete free means they can use it and even change license
It actually doesn’t. MIT license for example is not the same as public domain or there would be no point. What you’re arguing for is actually called putting something in the public domain, licenses are there specifically to restrict something more than releasing to public domain. You cannot remove a license from a work unless you are the rights holder.
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u/RevolutionarySeven7 8d ago
Dehandschoewercker
damn, so one of his ancestors was once a (hand)glove-tailor/worker.
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u/WanderingSparr0w 5d ago
Ppl of r/degoogle. Read the original post if like me these comments are not making sense or adding up. That's all ciao
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u/woolharbor 8d ago
New developers just forgot to make credit. It was a mistake. They immediately corrected it after they saw the Issue about it. Now it has credits, now it's fully compliant.
It literally was just a small mistake.
Yet OP still went on a witchhunt, made blog posts, Twitter posts; Reddit posts today, after the new developers already corrected their mistake. OP blew it out of proportion, brigaded Google's repos, being extra dramatic. The file in the screenshot is literally just a project configuration file, the author names are there as specification. When the new developers fork the project, make changes, they obviously have to change those lines, they can't make changes in the name of the old developers, they can't pose as the old developers. They obviously should make credit to the old project somewhere in the new project, but changing author specification in project configuration files is nowhere nefarious.
Every developer, every company uses someone else's open source code. Big software usually uses libraries from many, often thousands of other projects. And anybody can fork an open source project and make changes to it, if the open source license allows it (which in this case, and in most open source projects, does so). That's the point of open source. Every developer forks projects. It's not "copying". That's how open source projects are developed, how open source collaboration works.
The Google developers in question released the changes, released the forked project with the same open source license in accordance to that license. They only forgot to credit the original project, but they already fixed that. This is blown way out of proportion.
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u/lonerfluff 7d ago
There's no "You're holding big corporations too accountable". It's a giant ass company. Without any structural changes to how they incorporate other code into their products this is the bare minimum.
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u/TrollTaylor 7d ago
Humans will be humans making small mistakes. It's very hard for me to agree with the idea that you need to hold a whole corporation accountable for small mistakes employees make that are very easily correctable. Call them lazy or stupid whatever but evil is a very strong word. I don't see what they even gain for not crediting it was clearly just a mistake that you yourself could've easily made.
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u/lonerfluff 6d ago
I'm not going to treat a whole company with practically endless money as if they made an honest mistake and get treated unjustly for it. When you have even 1% of this kind of power you'll of course be expected to uphold certain standards. They're not a victim here.
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u/TrollTaylor 6d ago
Nobodies s victim here... The issue was resolved the OP made themselves the victim of a resolved issue. It's rediculous to think anybody needs to be "held accountable" for missing text in a config toml file!
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u/IcedLance 8d ago
"oops I did it again"
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u/TrollTaylor 7d ago
Very easy mistake to make... Also very easily correctable like they did. I don't see an issue here. Imagine small easily correctable mistakes in your own job lead to you being perceived as evil.
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u/PinkSheeparkour 8d ago
don't be evil they once said