He did admit copying the GS trading code. Goldman will not give up, at this rate Aleynikov will go bankrupt trying to extricate himself from his troubles IE he has already lost.
the concept of double jeopardy is out the window when different entities of government can prosecute you multiple times for the same crime.
the moral of the story is if you're going to steal from a big company, make sure they don't run the country
Yes, but the code he copied was mostly just open source software that GS had already "stolen" from elsewhere. The case against this guy is complete bullsh*t.
If it was all open source why take it from work when you know they're going to go ape***t when they figure it out?
I am just basing my opinion on this piece and other things I've read on this case: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer The part that stood out to me was that at least some of the code that he developed were modifications of open source code. And then Goldman Sachs claimed ownership of this code without crediting the original open source developer. That is both illegal and greedy. Ideally, somebody should convict Goldman Sachs employees for this practice. Here is the relevant section: I am trusting that this information is true. And if it is true, then either every single Goldman Sachs employee involved in this practice should be jailed, not just this Russian scapegoat. As far as I can tell, this case has no merit and the only way this Russian programmer could be convicted is if the jury was rigged or if the defense was incompetent.
First I think Vanity Fair pretty clearly doesn't understand the concept of open source software. If you add a proprietary piece to open source software, you are in no-way obligated to "return" those proprietary pieces to open source after you do so. Especially if you build something for internal use only, although that's not a rule in any circumstance. Have you ever used open source software as components to build something else? Did you "release" your additions to open source? If I use an open source FIX engine as part of my personal algorithmic trading system software to send orders, am I now obligated to open source the code for my entire trading system? Again, why in the world did he take it from GS then, if he clearly knew they were sensitive about it and he could have just as easily gotten the open source code for free from the source and made the same "minor modifications". Essentially you're saying a company could spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a proprietary trading system, and any employee would be fully justified stealing it if there was a single line of open source anywhere in the codebase. Clearly that's not at all reasonable, nor is it keeping with open source licensing.
I think you need to brush up on how open source licenses work. Depending on the type of license, you cannot use the code for commercial uses. Goldman Sachs is a business and that qualifies as a commercial use. And *ALL* open source licenses have attribution clauses and it appears that Goldman Sachs just stripped out those headers on everything that it stole. Illegal.
You better tell Red Hat they can't be selling their improvement to Linux then! The idea that open source software can't be used as a competent of any commercial use software is absurd. Does it have to be attributed, absolutely. Does GS failing to attribute internal use software justify an employee stealing it? Hardly.