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A little background from reading "Flash Boys": Goldman uses open source code but then strips off the open source license and replaces it with their own - thus

A little background from reading "Flash Boys": Goldman uses open source code but then strips off the open source license and replaces it with their own - thus changing open source code into "proprietary" Goldman Sacks code. Sergey was not allowed to submit his open source code fixes back to the o.s. repositories because once G.S. violates the O.S. copy write, it is now magically "proprietary". In order to keep his fixes he was sending himself code that contained modified/improved/fixed open source - along with actual G.S. proprietary code. G.S. system was a "ball of rubber bands". Sergey was going to a new job where he would make a completely different system and had no use for Goldman's code. The cop investigating this was unfamiliar with software For example; he thought that Sergey's use of (the source control app) "subversion" was obviously something um subversive. He basically believed everything that G.S. told him. This (from another source) describes some of these items: http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-programmer/ http://cryptonomics.org/2013/09/08/goldman-sachs-v-russian-p...

icebraining 12y ago
What the cop believed sounds irrelevant; he went to court and was convicted (and the later acquittance was on a technicality). The question of G.S. violating the OSS copyright is also not clear; usually, you can only violate copyright if you distribute software without a license. I'm not sure if removing the license on internal copies is legal, but no OS license I know of - not even the GPL - required them to share the changes back. I don't see any wrongdoing by GS part vis-a-vis OSS licenses, and as an employee, it wasn't his choice to make. Do I think the law is harsh? Yes. Would I do the same as GS? Certainly not. But as far as I'm concerned, he's conduct was in clear violation of the trust put on him as an employee (as he admitted), and it wouldn't influence my decision to join GS.

icebraining 12y ago

What the cop believed sounds irrelevant; he went to court and was convicted (and the later acquittance was on a technicality). The question of G.S. violating the OSS copyright is also not clear; usually, you can only violate copyright if you distribute software without a license. I'm not sure if removing the license on internal copies is legal, but no OS license I know of - not even the GPL - required them to share the changes back. I don't see any wrongdoing by GS part vis-a-vis OSS licenses, and as an employee, it wasn't his choice to make. Do I think the law is harsh? Yes. Would I do the same as GS? Certainly not. But as far as I'm concerned, he's conduct was in clear violation of the trust put on him as an employee (as he admitted), and it wouldn't influence my decision to join GS.