6 comments

  • dataflow 28 minutes 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?

    • VoidWhisperer 0 minutes 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 did
    • gr71 4 minutes ago
      This !
  • RossBencina 1 minute ago
    [delayed]
  • harshavamsi 20 minutes ago
    • jimrandomh 6 minutes 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.
    • rkagerer 16 minutes 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).

    • lunchbucket 6 minutes ago
      And if they had instead chosen to remain silent on the origin of the code, how would you have characterized their actions then?
  • pmkary 31 minutes ago
    When you say "don't be evil"; just where is your threshold Google?
  • bilekas 8 minutes 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.
  • de6u99er 20 minutes ago
    I'd like to know how many imposters work in big tech.