2 ms·

I read the original (very detailed) article. According to it, everything he copied was non-proprietary. Almost all of it was open source stuff.

dllthomas 13y ago
Changes to open source stuff may or may not be proprietary, depending...
horridrats 13y ago
Not according to Goldman Sachs: "While some of those files included open source software, the Court determined that 'a substantially greater number of the uploaded files contained proprietary code.'"
- Amadou 13y ago
  Sounds like two different definitions of the word "proprietary" are involved here: (1) Mechanical changes specific to the company -- this could be as simple as hardcoded hostnames that match the deployment environment. (2) Implementations of algorithms. In this case it isn't the code that is proprietary so much as the algorithm that the code is an expression of. I suspect that downandout is talking about defintion #1 and the court is talking about definition #2. Hard to say without seeing the code itself.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Presumably 1 subsumes 2.
auctiontheory 13y ago
According to it, everything he copied was non-proprietary. Almost all of it was open source stuff. That doesn't make any sense. If the code truly were FOSS, why on earth would he copy it from his employer when he could eliminate legal risk by downloading it off the open internet? We know he's not stupid.
- jamesjporter 13y ago
  The story I read about it claimed the following: He had made changes/improvements to various FOSS projects he was using at Goldman that he wanted to submit as patches upstream but his bosses wouldn't let him. He figured that since he was leaving he might as well take the FOSS code he had modified with him so he could submit patches later. The legality of this maneuver is tenuous at best, as others in this thread have noted, but in my opinion probably doesn't merit years of hounding prosecution and criminal charges.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Okay. That's interesting. I guess it could be true. Or it could also be a very creative and barely plausible explanation that happens to fit the provable facts of the case. It certainly requires us to accept an astonishing degree of naïveté in an otherwise very smart guy.
    - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      > It certainly requires us to accept an astonishing degree of naïveté in an otherwise very smart guy. You haven't met many programmers, have you? (I'm speaking of myself as well as friends and associates, here.)

dllthomas 13y ago

Changes to open source stuff may or may not be proprietary, depending...

horridrats 13y ago

Not according to Goldman Sachs: "While some of those files included open source software, the Court determined that 'a substantially greater number of the uploaded files contained proprietary code.'"

Amadou 13y ago
Sounds like two different definitions of the word "proprietary" are involved here: (1) Mechanical changes specific to the company -- this could be as simple as hardcoded hostnames that match the deployment environment. (2) Implementations of algorithms. In this case it isn't the code that is proprietary so much as the algorithm that the code is an expression of. I suspect that downandout is talking about defintion #1 and the court is talking about definition #2. Hard to say without seeing the code itself.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Presumably 1 subsumes 2.

auctiontheory 13y ago

According to it, everything he copied was non-proprietary. Almost all of it was open source stuff. That doesn't make any sense. If the code truly were FOSS, why on earth would he copy it from his employer when he could eliminate legal risk by downloading it off the open internet? We know he's not stupid.

jamesjporter 13y ago
The story I read about it claimed the following: He had made changes/improvements to various FOSS projects he was using at Goldman that he wanted to submit as patches upstream but his bosses wouldn't let him. He figured that since he was leaving he might as well take the FOSS code he had modified with him so he could submit patches later. The legality of this maneuver is tenuous at best, as others in this thread have noted, but in my opinion probably doesn't merit years of hounding prosecution and criminal charges.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Okay. That's interesting. I guess it could be true. Or it could also be a very creative and barely plausible explanation that happens to fit the provable facts of the case. It certainly requires us to accept an astonishing degree of naïveté in an otherwise very smart guy.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    > It certainly requires us to accept an astonishing degree of naïveté in an otherwise very smart guy. You haven't met many programmers, have you? (I'm speaking of myself as well as friends and associates, here.)