This article takes into consideration the problem of the authorship of the Cours de linguistique générale, published in 1916 by Ch. Bally and A. Sechehaye, with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger, under the name of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857- 1913). This editing decision was repeatedly questioned, but rarely examined in depth. We propose to dissect some of the most advanced arguments around this issue. We conclude that this problem is not interesting in itself, but depends on the criteria (historical, biographical, theoretical, etc.) that one may wish to take into account as relevant. Thus, the answer to our question (who is the author of the Cours de linguistique générale?) cannot aspire to be univocal – it will necessarily vary according to the underlying interests of those who take the risk of answering.