Here is the story covered in more detail: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol...
Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
31–40 of 142 posts
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.'"
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…
Presumably 1 subsumes 2.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is essentially correct. However this fight is about more than just him. Essentially he took open source that he modified while at Goldman (Which Goldman prohibited him from releasing *fixed). So while his life is ruined (Although he is still better of then 99.99% of people out there) there is a mighty precedent in the works here: employees can't go to jail for legally following license.
> (Which Goldman illegally prohibited him from releasing, while license explicitly said if you modify it for commercial product you must make your contributions public) I don't know the exact details of the case, but just to clarify: under the GPL, you don't have to release your changes if you aren't distributing that commercial product. e.g., If he modified it for in-house use, there is, AFAIK, no legal obligation t…
If he modified it for his own use, then that's clearly the case. If he modified it for the use of others within Goldman, they might have conceivably had a claim to a copy of the source under the GPL; he would not. I'm not entirely sure of that, or of whether employment contracts &c could limit that. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure what the answer should be there.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok can we please stop with the "conspiracy theorist" label/ad hominem attacks? After the NSA revelations have shown things to be a lot worse than even the more paranoid conspiracy theorists thought, folks with an eye for corruption have earned a little wiggle room to be taken seriously.
If you begin a statement with "It's very clear" then I expect you to back that statement up with facts so that the rest of us can see why it's so clear. Does it seem reasonable that Goldman Sachs want to send a message to their own programmers? Is that going to work well for them in recruiting? If anything, the NSA revelations have given conspiracy theorists carte blanche to go full steam on their theories. You'll ha…
Another important aspect is whether or not the belief in these theories is justified, regardless of whether or not they turn out to be true. This kind of relates to the Gettier problem in epistemology, where one may "know" something completely by accident, and we wouldn't really consider that "knowledge."
Were conspiracy theorists justified in believing their theories prior to the NSA leaks? Maybe, maybe not. But we should probably consider that independently of whether or not their theories turned out to be right. After all, we can never be 100% sure of our knowledge; the best we can do is seek the most reliable methods of inquiry. If a conspiracy theorist makes 50 predictions and 45 of them turn out to be correct, then we might have a reason to adopt their thought patterns; if someone has one big suspicion and that suspicion turns out to be true, I'm not sure how much we can conclude from that.
(Sorry, I know this discussion is getting off-topic... I just have a mild fascination with conspiracy theories and epistemology.)
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#35Question: does anyone know if software patents were declared null and void, would this case still exist? It seems he only took snippets of code and not the entire system for profit. How would this case differ if software was copyrightable but not patentable (i.e. Either you stole the manuscript or you didn't)?
I doubt patents have anything to do with this.
Patents restrict use, copyright restricts copies. AFAIK, he didn't actually run the 'stolen' software, only copied it.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that clear? I haven't followed the case, but it seems as though he copied important intellectual property (HFT code) when he left the firm. I'm sure if a developer at Apple or Microsoft downloaded the Windows or OS X kernel code when they left that they would face charges of some kind as well.
There was a really well-written feature on the case. As I recall, he used and modified open source code in his system. He tried to push his changes upstream, but ran into political pressure from inside of Goldman, so he tried to make a personal copy of the libraries he modified. You can certainly make the case that Goldman paid for that code, and if they didn't want it pushed upstream that's their prerogative, but it…
If all the changes were only his idea, this may be a reasonable assertion, but at large firms like goldman, the modifications he was making to code very, very likely came from insight from other team members.
If he incorporated other's insight in to his open source code by adding more code, I would view his actions in an extremely negative light.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#37The Michael Lewis article, which is more or less required reading on this: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol...
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#38It's very clear that Goldman is trying to punish him for leaving, while sending a message to their other programmers that if they leave, their lives will be ruined. Even if this guy ultimately wins the state trial, he will never get back the years he has spent fighting it. Goldman has already won, and in this case that is appalling.
No, it's very clear what he did was wrong. He works in an industry that does not allow you to email code home or copy it off of company computers. Goldman might be a little different, but where I've worked, this was definitely a no, no, and you could easily be fired for doing it.
According to the original article, Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it. Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about either Goldman's conduct or the intentions of the programmer.
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's very clear what he did was wrong. He works in an industry that does not allow you to email code home or copy it off of company computers. Goldman might be a little different, but where I've worked, this was definitely a no, no, and you could easily be fired for doing it.
According to the original article, Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it. Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about…
I don't know details of this case but it's very unlikely GS was violating any FOSS license for just modifying code (assuming internal use only).
Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round
#40This type of story underscores my Icarus-inspired philosophy in business: fly high but not so high that you become an obvious target or otherwise risk getting burned.
I learned relatively early that above some level (that's not even all that high), you'll find that you're dealing primarily with people whose sole purpose in life seems to be to serve their love of money and quest for validation. They are like insects drawn to a light and about as thoughtful.
Suffice to say that when you find that you have to play harder and harder to make up for the stress of your daily work life, it's time to take a look at what you really want and why you're doing what you're doing.