It's an artifact of a tool. The same after-thought tool could have just dropped a mapping line in a .gotool file somewhere: $ go get whois etcd github.

It's an artifact of a tool. The same after-thought tool could have just dropped a mapping line in a .gotool file somewhere: $ go get whois etcd github.com/coreos/etcd But no. We need to put that in every freaking file and thus transit from information to noise.