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| provenance:programming:crawler:webxray [2026/08/17 08:09] – Reviewer 1 fixes and its full log: the hostname-count heuristic, the suffix-fold residue attribution, and the corrected B4 figures. Authored by Claude. karel.kubicek.claude | provenance:programming:crawler:webxray [2026/08/17 08:13] (current) – Record the relicensing correction and the fifth reviewer's log: how the licence claim came to rest on an unrepresentative snapshot, and the two most serious defects being invisible to every automated guard here. Authored by Claude. karel.kubicek.claude |
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| | ''thezedwards/webXray'' last pushed 2021-03-04, 19 forks, newest fork activity 2023-03-12 | GitHub API repo + ''/forks?per_page=100'' | | | ''thezedwards/webXray'' last pushed 2021-03-04, 19 forks, newest fork activity 2023-03-12 | GitHub API repo + ''/forks?per_page=100'' | |
| | the surviving README still says ''git clone https://github.com/timlib/webXray.git'' | fetched ''raw.githubusercontent.com/thezedwards/webXray/master/README.md'' | | | the surviving README still says ''git clone https://github.com/timlib/webXray.git'' | fetched ''raw.githubusercontent.com/thezedwards/webXray/master/README.md'' | |
| | PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0, no redistribution, noncommercial permitted incl. research organisations | fetched ''LICENSE.md'' from the same repo and read the licence text itself, not a summary | | | PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0 on the ''thezedwards'' snapshot | fetched ''LICENSE.md'' from that repo and read the licence text itself, not a summary. **This is not webXray's final licence** — see the next row | |
| | | webXray was relicensed to GPLv3 (2021-06-14, commit ''245ec5d7'') and then to **MIT** (2023-02-01, commit ''73fe0fc9'', authored by "Tim Libert") | fetched ''api.github.com/repos/peterjoles/webXray'' (''spdx_id: MIT''), its ''LICENSE'' ("Copyright (c) 2023 Tim Libert"), the ''commits?path=LICENSE'' history, and ''compare/master...peterjoles:master'' (''ahead_by: 36''). The page's first version asserted webXray "is not open source and redistributing it is prohibited" from the ''thezedwards'' snapshot alone, which was the most restrictively licensed copy in existence — the exact mistake the page tells readers to avoid | |
| | PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 is still the current version and has no SPDX identifier | ''polyformproject.org/licenses'' lists ''strict/1.0.0'' and no later Strict version; SPDX's own ''license-list-data'' JSON carries only ''PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0'' and ''PolyForm-Small-Business-1.0.0'' | | | PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 is still the current version and has no SPDX identifier | ''polyformproject.org/licenses'' lists ''strict/1.0.0'' and no later Strict version; SPDX's own ''license-list-data'' JSON carries only ''PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0'' and ''PolyForm-Small-Business-1.0.0'' | |
| | raw CDP, no Selenium | ''webxray/ChromeDriver.py'' imports ''create_connection'' from ''websocket''; ''requirements.txt'' pins ''lxml==4.6.2'', ''psycopg2-binary==2.8.6'', ''textstat==0.7.0'', ''websocket-client==0.57.0'' | | | raw CDP, no Selenium | ''webxray/ChromeDriver.py'' imports ''create_connection'' from ''websocket''; ''requirements.txt'' pins ''lxml==4.6.2'', ''psycopg2-binary==2.8.6'', ''textstat==0.7.0'', ''websocket-client==0.57.0'' | |
| * **Naming the miscitation.** Recorded as a verifiable fact about a reference list, with the methodological point it illustrates, and with no characterisation of the authors. The alternative — a vague "watch out for homographs" — would have been unfalsifiable. | * **Naming the miscitation.** Recorded as a verifiable fact about a reference list, with the methodological point it illustrates, and with no characterisation of the authors. The alternative — a vague "watch out for homographs" — would have been unfalsifiable. |
| * **Quoting webXray's licence at length.** It is the single most actionable fact on the page: a student who plans a study around webXray has planned a study around software they cannot legally obtain. A one-line "non-commercial licence" would have understated it. | * **Quoting webXray's licence at length.** It is the single most actionable fact on the page: a student who plans a study around webXray has planned a study around software they cannot legally obtain. A one-line "non-commercial licence" would have understated it. |
| | * **Discoverability, and where this material really belongs.** The wiki's only treatment of domain-to-company ownership resolution now sits under the name of a dead tool, where nobody asking "how do I attribute a domain?" will look. The generic reviewer was right that the earlier rejection of a separate ''design:ownership_resolution'' page ("it would leave a red link pointing at a stub") was a weak argument — a real webXray page and a topic page can coexist. Mitigated for now by linking this page from [[Privacy:Requests]], which is where a reader asking "whose request is this?" actually lands. Splitting out a topic page is worth doing and is recorded here rather than done. |
| * **''%%<WRAP important>%%'' boxes rather than ''%%<wrap todo>%%''.** No open TODOs were left on the content page: the unknowns are stated in its methodology section with what would close them, which is where a reader checking a number will look. The one real TODO — correcting [[Programming:Crawler]] — is recorded here, because it is work on a different page. | * **''%%<WRAP important>%%'' boxes rather than ''%%<wrap todo>%%''.** No open TODOs were left on the content page: the unknowns are stated in its methodology section with what would close them, which is where a reader checking a number will look. The one real TODO — correcting [[Programming:Crawler]] — is recorded here, because it is work on a different page. |
| * **No ''~~DISCUSSION~~'' on this provenance page.** Following the convention set by the earlier provenance pages: comments belong on the content page. | * **No ''~~DISCUSSION~~'' on this provenance page.** Following the convention set by the earlier provenance pages: comments belong on the content page. |
| per-paper figures in the cited sources. Anything reviewer 1 reports after | per-paper figures in the cited sources. Anything reviewer 1 reports after |
| publication goes into the page history, not into this log. | publication goes into the page history, not into this log. |
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| | |
| | --- Reviewer 5: industry and website claims (late) ----------------------------- |
| | |
| | Checked 13 items against primary sources; 10 passed. It found the single most |
| | important error on the page, in the claim the licence box is built on. |
| | |
| | ACCEPTED (blocking -- the page's central licence claim was wrong): |
| | 1. **webXray was relicensed TWICE after the snapshot this page measures, and |
| | ended up MIT.** Verified directly: commit 245ec5d7 (2021-06-14) "Update |
| | LICENSE.md - Now open-source" makes it GPLv3, and commit 73fe0fc9 |
| | (2023-02-01), authored by "Tim Libert", replaces that with an MIT LICENSE |
| | reading "Copyright (c) 2023 Tim Libert". peterjoles/webXray reports |
| | spdx_id: MIT and is 36 commits AHEAD of thezedwards/webXray, preserving |
| | upstream history -- including Libert's own post-2021 feature work -- past the |
| | deletion of the upstream repo. Several other forks report GPL-3.0. |
| | |
| | So "webXray is not open source, and redistributing it is prohibited" was true |
| | of the one snapshot the page happened to build on and false of the project's |
| | final state, and the page's own advice -- "verify the licence of whatever file |
| | you actually download" -- is exactly what it failed to do. The licence box is |
| | rewritten as a three-row table of the three licences with what each permits, |
| | the availability table now names peterjoles/webXray as the most complete copy |
| | and says plainly that every figure here comes from the most restrictively |
| | licensed copy that exists, and the lede no longer says the tool "is gone". |
| | 2. **"three small commits in a personal working copy"** for the newest fork |
| | activity was wrong: those are 36 preserved upstream commits, not a fork |
| | owner's tinkering. Corrected. |
| | 3. **forks_count reports 19 while the forks endpoint returns 20 objects.** The |
| | page cited the endpoint for the number 19. Now states both. |
| | |
| | ACCEPTED (should fix): |
| | 4. The Mozilla shavar footnote is attached to a row about entities.json, but |
| | disconnect-blacklist.json mirrors services.json; the file mirroring |
| | entities.json is disconnect-entitylist.json. The quote is verbatim, the |
| | attachment was to the sibling file. |
| | 5. "whotracks.me now redirects" is imprecise: it returns HTTP 200 with a |
| | canonical link to ghostery.com/whotracksme, serving byte-identical content |
| | rather than issuing a redirect. |
| | |
| | Independently re-confirmed, already fixed: the Ghostery trackerdb licence (CC |
| | BY-NC-SA 4.0, and it is whotracks.me that is MIT -- the page had them inverted), |
| | the RDBinns commit range (11 commits, 2018-03-29 to 2018-04-05), and the |
| | truncated PSL quotation. Also confirmed against SEC filings rather than press |
| | releases: the Xandr close (AT&T Form 10-Q, "On June 6, 2022") and the Teads close |
| | (Outbrain 8-K, "On February 3, 2025"), plus that SEC now lists CIK 0001454938 as |
| | "Teads Holding Co." with formerNames "Outbrain Inc." -- the acquirer took the |
| | target's name, as the page says. |
| | |
| | The lesson worth keeping: five reviewers found five defects nobody else found, |
| | and the two most serious -- a coverage figure depressed by my own lookup rule, and |
| | a licence claim resting on an unrepresentative snapshot -- were both invisible to |
| | every automated guard in this repository. |
| |
| ===== I. Unedited output: scripts/report_webxray.mjs ===== | ===== I. Unedited output: scripts/report_webxray.mjs ===== |