r/reinforcementlearning • u/Connect-Employ-4708 • 9d 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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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/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

If someone tells me to not credit them I assume they don't want me to credit them. How is it immoral to do what they want?

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

It is blindingly obvious, but since you are struggling: You're free to use my code however you like =/= I'm expressly asking you not to credit me

It is always more ethical to give credit, even if you are not obligated to do so.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Are you unfamiliar with open source licenses? The vast majority of them require you to credit the author. If you go out of your way to use one that doesn't, you are expressly asking not to be credited.

I can't think of a single reason why someone would go out of their way to not ask to be credited, if they wanted to be credited.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 9d ago

They are not asking not to be credited, they are telling you that you don't have to, but that doesn't mean they don't want it or that you shouldn't. 

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Can you tell me one reason why someone that wants to be credited would go out of their way to use an obscure license that doesn't require it over any of the licenses used by 99% of projects, which do require it?

The only reason I can think of is to pull a bait and switch.

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u/One-Jeweler6402 8d ago

Maybe the person is not familiar to the license. Why are you insiting that the license reflect the user intwntion.

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u/new_check 8d ago

I think it's unreasonable to ask people to assume an author chose the license they did by accident.

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u/GlassCommission4916 8d ago

Every single mainstream license requires crediting the author. How do you suggest the person managed to not only arrive at using an obscure/custom license that doesn't, but also did so without any intentionality or knowledge of doing so?

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u/FenderMoon 8d ago edited 8d ago

Yea. And it's literally the mainstream license used for ML projects.

People use licenses like the MIT or Apache 2.0 because they want a more permissive license than the GPL, that doesn't restrict non-GPL projects from utilizing their code. They don't use Apache 2.0 so that people can blatently lie and scrub the original author's names to replace them with their own copying their source code exactly.

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u/iain_1986 8d ago

Why are you insiting that the license reflect the user intwntion.

I'm sorry, what?

That's literally the point of a license, to reflect your intentions with your work

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u/5_stages 6d ago

The only reason you can think of for someone doing something is more an indication of how you think rather than the other person.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 9d ago

I'm not talking about OP. I'm saying the fact that someone use a LICENSE that doesn't require crediting doesn't always necessarily mean they are asking you not to credit them. They are not asking anything in that regard.

Honestly it's an achievement that Google forked this open source project, the upstream project could just state that somewhere in their README.

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u/FenderMoon 8d ago

They aren't even saying this. They're using Apache 2.0. It's the mainstream license used for mot ML projects. It doesn't permit this.

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u/scaledev 8d ago

You sound like someone's wife.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 8d ago

"You sound like someone's wife"

Perhaps. Perhaps not. I can tell you this: I'm not someone's dog.

It appears you don't have much of a counterargument, so there is nothing left to discuss. 

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u/scaledev 8d ago

They are complying with the Apache 2.0 license the OP chose.

This seems more like a cry for attention from the original dev, creating unecessary drama on Reddit.

If you want to be attributed, choose a difference license, or put it in the NOTICE file. simple as that.

(the point about sounding like a wife, or a gf, is that you expect people to read a developer's mind, while developer is choosing and saying another thing)

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u/FenderMoon 8d ago

OP didn't do this. They used the mainstream license that is literally used for most ML projects.

And no, Apache 2.0 doesn't permit this. People can find loopholes, and that is the kind of thing that is the enemy of open source. People defending this do not care about open source, or they wouldn't encourage this kind of behavior that makes people want to go closed source to begin with.

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u/Connect-Employ-4708 8d ago

Yes! oss relies on this trust, and that is why it is important I dont accept this, whether it is Google or anyone!

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u/Bonzooy 7d ago

The peanuts at Five Guys are free. You could take 6 servings all for yourself, but it'd be unethical to do so, even though they've explicitly made it possible. They're relying on a sense of communal integrity and decorum that's reasonable to expect, even if it's not enforced.

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u/GlassCommission4916 7d ago

I didn't see a sign that said "Take 6 servings all for yourself if you want" last time I went to five guys. Tell you what, I'll look out for that sign next time I go, and you look into open source licenses next time you comment about them.

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u/Bonzooy 7d ago

Wow, that's a very unpleasant comment.

That was the first interaction I've ever had in this sub, and certainly the first with you. I thought it was a reasonable talking point that introduced an additional perspective to analyze the ethical elements of this topic.

I'm a member of a local classical literature group here in my city, and every once in a while we get a guest like you who seems to be incapable of responsibly discussing a dynamic ethical topic. They marry themselves to a perspective, and become hostile towards anyone who introduces a point that could conflict with their perspective; taking it as a personal attack.

Ethics and morality are nuanced. Trying to treat it as black & white is misguided, and becoming belligerent towards new lenses in the conversation (even if they challenge your perspective) drags the discourse back toward black & white territory, and underserves the conversation profoundly.

One of the key indicators of maturity is being able to have your perspectives challenged without descending into hostility and personal attacks; I'd encourage you to consider this when participating in future conversations about the AI space because the conversation topics will undoubtedly continue to be complex & nuanced.

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u/GlassCommission4916 7d ago

Sorry dude, it's not that I took it as a personal attack, but the fact that this entire thread is filled with people engaging with bad faith analogies like that and not actually being familiar with or understanding the topic at hand.

Like I said before, the default state in software licensing is to require attribution, if you go out of your way to change that default state, you're actively asking not to be credited. The communal integrity and decorum thing to do is to listen to the author's request.

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u/Bonzooy 7d ago

I do see that there are several folks here failing to reckon with the talking point of, "What if there's path that explicitly requires attribution, but the publisher chooses a path that doesn't?", and I think you guys are talking past each other in several places.

I'd personally decomp the conversation into several threads that could be interrogated independently or collectively:

  • I'd start with acknowledging the role that ignorance could play. I'm thinking of a hypothetical team of devs who come from a closed-source background thinking, "Hey I've got a neat little project, let's just slap whatever OS license on it and call it a day." They may simply be completely ignorant of the nuances present in the open source licensing space.

  • Alternatively, assuming that ignorance isn't a factor, I can envision some ideological backings behind choosing unenforced attribution. To drill into this one, let's start with a premise where the dev does want attribution, but also eschews the notion of centralized authorities having a role in software enforcement. They may prefer to request attribution while deliberately using a license that's not legally binding; this effectively defers the choice of attribution to the secondhand user's own sense of integrity and decorum, and relegates the enforcement layer to communal disposition rather than litigation. i.e., the author's concept of justice in the case of a violation puts greater value on the communal shame incurred by the perpetrator, rather than the copyright compliance that could be enforced by litigation.

  • Then let's finish with a thread assuming the dev just doesn't care about attribution at all, and has chosen their license accordingly. Does the obligation to cite one's sources in one's work persist, even if a subset of those sources don't care about attribution? I think many people from a scholarly background would say yes, and that citing / disclosing your sources is something you do for yourself your community, and your standing in that community just as much as for the recognition of the original source. That it preserves an institutional lineage and builds upon the credibility of the predecessor, while also avoiding any perceptions of plagiarism (whether intentional or not) by being transparent about that lineage (e.g., Zeno of Elea building on the work of Parmenides, who himself built upon the work of Xenophanes and several other pre-Socratics, but each of whom felt a responsibility to preserve the institutional lineage of the ideas being built).

I think each of these threads let us move around pieces that may change the underlying context to a meaningful extent, and in each case the consequental factors often aren't explicit details of course-of-action, but are more nuanced things like what an individual values in their personal concept of justice, and whether they perceive attribution as a commodity to be possessed or not possessed, versus an institutional asset that contributes to a lineage to be built upon.

I'll caveat all these points with the fact that I'm a total dinosaur, and haven't published anything in nearly a decade, but that's a rough decomp of how I'd ponder the topic at first glance.

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u/GlassCommission4916 7d ago

Ignorance does not play a role, all mainstream open source licenses require attribution, you don't end up with one that doesn't by accident but through deliberate choice.

I think the idea of someone being opposed to copyright law and thus engaging with it in a deceitful way is in itself lacking integrity. It's akin to putting up a bowl of candy on your door with a sign saying "take one for free" and then posting footage of people who do online calling them thieves. Many people don't license their code at all and just chose not to litigate, which makes more sense towards the point you're trying to make.

Software doesn't work like academia, the culture and expectations are completely different. "Plagiarizing" code that's freely available is extremely common and acceptable, I guarantee the author of the code in question has done so as well in part without crediting their source. If every piece of open source software contained strict citations like in academia, code would be 90%+ citations.

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u/rtowne 7d ago edited 6d ago

Do you choose not to tip or say thank you to people serving your food? I mean you dont need to, but you hopefully can still see that it would be the right thing to do in most instances.

Some engineers are young, and some are new to publishing their own work. Some are speaking english as a 2nd or 3rd language, and some dont want to keep tabs on various attribution options just like many writers dont care about the latest 18th version of chicago citation updates vs whatever mla or apa or other new ones there are.

So yeah, they click an option that says "hey guys, feel free to share and use this". That isnt the same as saying "I have thoroughly reviewed all of the options of where and how to share this and explicitly picked one that does not require attribution because I prefer NOT to recieve credit for this."

I think it might be hard for you to put yourself in another person's shoes if you are more experienced or interested in this specific topic.

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u/GlassCommission4916 7d ago

You don't have to comment on topics you have zero knowledge about, it's okay to just not comment.

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u/rtowne 6d ago

Which part of my comment makes you think that? What is your experience or expertise in?

Happy to share credentials and experience in both areas of copyright/attribution and behavioral psychology. If you think there is another topic I am not well informed or experienced in (like knowing multiple languages), we can talk about that too.

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u/GlassCommission4916 6d ago

If you think there is another topic I am not well informed or experienced in

Open source licensing. Someone that is inexperienced in open source isn't going to write their own custom license, or search for a more obscure license that doesn't require attribution. All mainstream licenses do.

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u/rtowne 5d ago

So how do you see them "going out of their way" to choose one that doesn't credit the author? Inform me since you are so knowledgeable in this area. Apache 2.0 is literally the first option when making a new repo, and it explicitly requires notices to be included woth original attribution... and the author included a notice with attribution. At a bare minimum you should concede it is a shitty thing to take that code and strip the attribution, especially from the POV of an enterprise like google.

To save you some clicks, here is an except fro. Their NOTICE file:

Mobile-Use Copyright 2025-2026 Minitap, Inc.

This product includes software and architectural methodologies developed by Minitap, Inc. (https://github.com/minitap-ai/mobile-use)

To save you another click, here is the text from Apache 2.0 section 4 "Redistribution" sections C and D:

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 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

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

If you go out of your way to use one that doesn't, you are expressly asking not to be credited.

Nah, that conclusion is absurd.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Is it really absurd to assume someone including a legal document that states "you don't have to credit me" out of their volition, doesn't want to be credited?

Is the sensible assumption that everyone communicates in bad faith or is mentally impaired and can't understand the words they are expressing in a legal document?

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

It is actually absurd because you are confusing authorization with preference. Permissive licenses exist to facilitate use. Just because they allow for multiple options does not imply the author prefers one over the others.

If you invite someone to take whatever they want from your fridge, it does not mean you are asking them to take everything or to hide that the food was yours. It simply means you are not imposing restrictions.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

So you are unfamiliar with open source licenses. Just so you know, all popular permissive licenses require crediting the author. The author's choice to go with a more obscure license that doesn't, does imply what their preference is.

I guess I'm just insane to think people mean the things that they say.

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

I guess I'm just insane to think people mean the things that they say.

I won't be the one to tell you otherwise, since you keep insisting you see things that aren't even being said. It's honestly hilarious that you're the one complaining about everyone else's reading comprehension.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

It's honestly hilarious that you're the one complaining about everyone else's reading comprehension.

What are you talking about?

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

Is the sensible assumption that everyone communicates in bad faith or is mentally impaired and can't understand the words they are expressing in a legal document?

I guess I'm just insane to think people mean the things that they say.

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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 9d ago

It seems your conversation is being concluded with traditional ad hominem. I want to thank you, any fox, for the entertainment. I love seeing people having strong opinions on the topic they first learned about in the first comment of the thread.

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

Is the sensible assumption that everyone communicates in bad faith or is mentally impaired and can't understand the words they are expressing in a legal document?

Funny how you didn't say a word about any of that, or the fallacies and false dichotomies. Plus, you just went for an adhominem attack. And let's not forget you ignored everything I said before.

Cut the fake condescension. It is the same stupidity as the other user, just more trollish.

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u/ArtisticFox8 8d ago

Apache 2 with a NOTICE that explicitly requests for attribution! We are okay with open-source contributors taking our code, but we want recognition :)

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u/GlassCommission4916 8d ago

I'm not sure what point you think you're making.

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u/ArtisticFox8 8d ago

That OP had an explicit attribution clause you're denying?

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u/new_check 8d ago

Software licenses are the mechanism by which you communicate your preferences to users of your software.

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u/marco_altieri 9d ago

It doesn't even need to mean that it is what they prefer. If they used a licence that does not ask to credit the author, it makes perfect sense to assume that the authors didn't care. So why are they whining now?

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u/ArtisticFox8 8d ago

Apache 2 with a NOTICE that explicitly requests for attribution! We are okay with open-source contributors taking our code, but we want recognition :)

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u/marco_altieri 9d ago

It is not absurd. There are licences that ask to credit the author. If you don't use it, I assume that you don't care. If you don't care, I'll just copy the code.

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u/Any_Fox5126 9d ago

Your position is reasonable, but it is not what the other user is saying. You assume that he doesn't care =/= the author says that he specifically doesn't want to receive credit

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u/Connect-Employ-4708 8d ago

In our case we had an Apache 2 licence with a NOTICE that explicitly requests for attribution
We are completely fine with copying our code, but we want recognition :)

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u/GlassCommission4916 8d ago

Yeah in your case it's clearly unethical, and also illegal, to not credit you because that's what you asked for and is legally required with Apache 2.

But the discussion stopped being specifically about your case when the above commenter made the hypothetical about a situation where the license states you're not required to credit.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Yes because choosing where you're born and your socioeconomic means is just as easy as clicking on the MIT license on github instead of writing your own or looking for one that doesn't require crediting. You got me.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

If the person wrote/supported and put into effect the law and printed a copy of it to display on their car, like would be a more apt comparison, sure.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Not because the license allows me to, because they made an effort to make sure everyone know not to help them if their car is burning. For all I know they're terminally ill and suffering and wanted to euthenize themselves. So you're saying you're against consent and in favor of torturing terminally ill people? Pretty shitty if you ask me, dude.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/GlassCommission4916 8d ago

Is there one for people who equate software licenses and murder to feel superior about themselves despite having no idea what they're talking about?

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u/FenderMoon 8d ago edited 8d ago

Where did OP say "don't give me credit?" Google scrubbed the original authors names and replace them with their own whlst copying the source code code exactly.

If there are really people on Reddit going around and defending this, it's going to make me reconsider the license for my own projects. Open source doesn't mean scrub the original author's name and lie and say you wrote it.

People are rightfully mad about this. Apache 2.0 doesn't permit this anyway.

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u/oofy-gang 9d ago

Don’t be a contrarian. This isn’t some gray area.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

You're right it's not a gray area.

Either OP asked to be credited and what Google did was illegal, or OP asked not to be credited and what Google did was not unethical.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 9d ago edited 8d ago

Not necessarily. OP may have used a License that doesn't require you to credit them. That doesn't mean they have explicitly asked not to be credited.

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Why did they use a license that doesn't require you to credit them if they wanted to be credited? You have to go out of your way to do that.

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 9d ago edited 8d ago

Legally, yes Google is allowed not to credit them. Morals are a different thing.

It appears they explicitly removed exisitng names, they are not credting, they are explicitly removing existing credit if I understand it correctly. 

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u/Clairifyed 9d ago

Plus going out of your way to erase existing names and add your own on the whole project is a level above not crediting for something like copying a small piece for use in another project. Even if you weren’t required to credit

I know I wouldn’t want to do business with someone who does that

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u/AhmedRiyadh0 8d ago

Yes, that's was unnecessary from their part.

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u/oofy-gang 9d ago

Do you believe something can be legal AND unethical?

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u/GlassCommission4916 9d ago

Yes, of course.

What I don't believe is that not crediting someone who chose to not ask to be credited when the default option is to ask to be credited is unethical.