Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round • Hacker News Board

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#121

Post by davidw » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:01 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #83

Sergey is a good Erlang programmer. He is active in on the Erlang mailing list. He wrote a cool C++ to Erlang interface. Here is his Github account: https://github.com/saleyn I am happy for him. He is a great asset to the open source community.

Yeah, I didn't put two and two together until after reading the Vanity Fair article, but I'd been interacting with Sergey because we're using erlexec in a project:

https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec/commits/master?page=2

Nice, and helpful person.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#122

Post by ghaff » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 8:02 AM UTC

Amadou wrote: post #45

downandout wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it. I down-voted you because people keep saying that and it is false. The Vanity Fair article uses the qualifier "possibly" when talking about GS violating the licenses and that's because none of the major license families (BSD, GPL, MPL, etc) have a requirement to release modifications if the whole is not re…

That was a point in the original Vanity Fair article that really caught my attention because it seemed very wrong the way it was stated. None of us know all the details but--based on what was written in that article--it sure doesn't sound like a license violation.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#123

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:00 AM UTC

darose wrote: post #81

downandout wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the Vanity Fair article, it sounds like Goldman is in fact violating the terms of the license, but not in the way you're describing. (I.e., not by refusing to release changes.) According to the article Goldman would routinely strip off the license/copyright from off of the open source code file and replace it with their own copyright. And that is a violation of many open source licenses.

I could be wrong, but wouldn't it only be a violation to release the code after stripping off the license/copyright?

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#124

Post by ig1 » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:06 AM UTC

Amadou wrote: post #56

ig1 wrote: post #43

A lot of the comments here seem to be oblivious to the details of the original indictment: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/021110aleyn... It pretty explicitly details how the "backup" program he wrote had flags to select what to copy and some of those flags specifically copied GS option pricing code that he had never worked on.

That's not what I see when I read it. I see that he wrote a backup script that could backup two distinct groups of files depending on what argument he passed on the command-line. While the indictment mentions that some of the files included stuff he didn't work on, it doesn't say he set flags specifically to grab stuff he hadn't worked on. Only that it was getting swept up as part of a larger backup operation. It als…

I don't think your comment and my comment fundamentally agree. There are two issues at play here:

1) Did he copy propriety GS code that he had no involvement with. A lot of people seem in this thread seem to think he didn't, but as far as I can tell from the indictment it's pretty explicit that he did and I don't think that it's disputed by either side.

2) Was his intention out of malice (intention to steal trade secrets), stupidity or something in between.

The first is the point I'm making without commenting on the second.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#125

Post by Volpe » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 9:45 AM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #71

Love the racial inclusion for no reason.

That was sarcasm (btw). And I was pointing out the article was pointing out the programmer was Russian for absolutely no reason. Why was it important for us to know his nationality?

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#126

Post by Grue3 » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 10:04 AM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #125

Volpe wrote: post #71

Love the racial inclusion for no reason.

That was sarcasm (btw). And I was pointing out the article was pointing out the programmer was Russian for absolutely no reason. Why was it important for us to know his nationality?

I am Russian and I agree with this. Not all of us are prone to leak trade secrets, honest!

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#127

Post by vidarh » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 10:41 AM UTC

merraksh wrote: post #26

which time he sent himself, through a so-called "subversion repository," 32 megabytes of source code from Goldman’s high-frequency stock-trading system. I can't help smile at the thought of what non-CS people might mistake a " subversion repository" for.

Just imagine the reactions you can get from talking about daemons reaping zombie children... Though given how mainstream gory video games have become, talking about Unix process management in public doesn't sound quite as shocking as it used to.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#128

Post by rayiner » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

tsaoutourpants wrote: post #102

sanxiyn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United States recognizes a legal doctrine of dual sovereignity, so a state can try what the federal government already tried.

...also known as "we carved yet another exception into the clearly worded text of the Constitution"

The Bill of Rights, like most of the Constitution except clearly identified provisions, wasn't originally intended to apply to the states. It was only in the 20th century that the Supreme Court started the process of incorporating provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states via the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (which was a reconstruction amendment explicitly imposing restrictions on the states).

So the clear text of the Constitution, as the drafters understood it, did not prohibit concurrent federal and state criminal trials for the same crime. Indeed, it imposed no limits on state criminal procedure at all. No due process, no nothing.

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#129

Post by dctoedt » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 11:44 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #105

beagle3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but if I understand correctly, to claim copyright infringement, they would have had to register the work with the library of congress, and essentially make it publicly viewable - which I assume they didn't want. Copyright in this kind of case is usable almost exclusively by GPL style licenses, where the code is already available.

Registration is not required. Registering allows you to sue for more money than if you don't register, but any creative work is automatically protected by copyright law (including full rights to control and prevent reproduction/distribution) automatically as of the moment the work is first fixed into a "tangible form of expression".

> Registration is not required.

That's not entirely correct. From the U.S. copyright statute, 17 USC 411: "... no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title." [1]

(The term "United States work" is defined in 17 USC 101 [2]. There are certain exceptions, unlikely to be relevant.)

[1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#411

[2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

Re: Russian programmer fights Goldman Sachs and wins one round

#130

Post by lambda » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 12:33 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #98

lambda wrote: post #79

If anyone's interested, I found the appeals court ruling finding him not guilty of violating federal law, and leading to his release, on PACER, uploaded to the Internet Archive so you can access it without a paywall via RECAP: https://ia700209.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.35... The basic argument hinges on the three counts, related to three laws he was alleged to have broken: the Economic Espionage Act, t…

Is he on trial again after an appeals court already found him not guilty? The article is a little unclear on that point. First it says he's suing Goldman to recoup losses, and then at the end it says: Aleynikov has pleaded not guilty and is waiting for his trial in New York State Court. Does "not guilty" refer to the trial in which he's suing them? Or is there another trial even though he's already been found not gui…

Yes, he's on trial now for violating state laws, since the appeals court ruled that the federal laws in question did not apply to his case.

So, he's been found not to be guilty of those particular federal crimes, but there may be state crimes that he could still be found guilty of. They are separate jurisdictions and separate laws, so it doesn't count as double jeopardy.