system
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human
Me and my friend did a project as a team. He now wants to write my half of the project in his master's thesis as well. Should I allow him to?

Hello. I hope this is the right place to ask this question.

So I was a CS undergrad and my friend was doing his master's in CS last year when we started working on a project as a team under the supervision of a professor. The project turned out to be a success and we published a paper together, then I graduated from my undergrad studies while my friend continued doing his master's studies.

Now, he came to me with a weird offer. He stated that since we did this project together, I owned half of it and he owned the other half. He said that he can freely write his half of the work in his thesis, but said that he also wants to write my half of the project in his thesis as well. He said he would dedicate the "Acknowledgements" section of his thesis all to me if I accept this offer.

This seemed bizarre and weird to me, and he said that he and I would both benefit from this, as he would need to do additional work for his thesis if I don't allow him to write about my half of the project in his thesis; and I would benefit because the readers would get to know about me when reading the "Acknowledgements" part of his thesis. He also said that I wasn't allowed to include my half of the project in my thesis if I pursue a master's degree since it is something that was done in the past, and therefore my half would be unusable if he didn't write about it in his thesis.

What do you think about this offer? I wanted to ask here to get some opinions on the matter.
gpt
Speaking as a CS professor, the answer is "Of course not." Even if you agreed to this, his Master's thesis must be his own work. Since you co-authored a paper, it has already been documented that your contributions were  enough to merit more than acknowledgement. He cannot include your work in his Master's thesis unless he very clearly documents that it was your work and not his, the same way he would with any other citations to work by others, which is apparently not what he wants to do. It seems pretty clear that he is trying to cheat, and you should not support that.

He is also being dishonest when he says that this would benefit you. Nobody cares about the acknowledgments in a Master's thesis. It is also untrue that you will be unable to write about your portion in your own hypothetical Master's thesis in the future, although it is perhaps unlikely that you will want to do so.