dataflow

> 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?

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RossBencina

Here's the force pushed pyproject.toml with the new author if anyone cares:

https://github.com/google/artemis/compare/14e02c4c27bc5b3c0d...

    + authors = [
    +     { name = "somew1nd", email = "[REDACTED]@outlook.com" },
    + ]
Seems legit
harshavamsi
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neilv

Regardless of whether or not Google is liable, what would be interesting to me is how this happened, the role(s) at Google that were involved, when each knew of the problem, and what each did.

(I'm interested in what this says about current culture.)

pmkary

When you say "don't be evil"; just where is your threshold Google?

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bilekas

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

I'd like to know how many imposters work in big tech.

RossBencina

Flagging because the title here on HN is editorializing. The actual page title is "I expected better from Google"

I was going to comment on the title's perpetuation of big IPs stealing/theft meme but it turns out that TFA did not use those words.