Jacobs said that the language of the statute refers to products that have been “produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce….”. This, then, includes two sorts of product, both with a limited meaning, those that have “already been introduced into [placed in] the stream of commerce” on the one hand and on the other hand to those that “are still being developed or readied” [produced for] such placement. The words evoke two distinct sets of products with a sequential relationship to one another, which satisfies well-established rules of statutory construction.

Aleynikov’s work was specifically in the development of “infrastructure programs that facilitate the flow of information throughout the trading system and monitor the system’s performance.” That trading system was created for the sake of engaging in commerce without regard to state or national lines. But the infrastructure of that system does not thereby satisfy the language “produced for or placed in….”

I wasn’t a salesman but the value that salesman has is his/her relationships not the actual names – which are typically the same people the company he is going to are already selling to. In this case, judging by his salary bracket, the guy was a coder not a quant or a developer of the algos themselves. As such what he could take with him in his head was some of the pitfalls or shortcuts that the new company could avoid or take in building a similar system and that experience would be his to give. However, I doubt writing fast market data handler code is worth 1.2million USD and debugged reading to go code is likely to be more likely what they were paying for.

You are/were in finance. If you were a salesman, you might think that you had some level of right to your client list, which you developed and succeeded with over a period of years. Your employer likely thinks it owns your client list, and you have no rights to it after you leave.

In one instance I was at a software company where an employee quit and attempted to download an entire product source tree onto a CD before leaving. That was pretty clearly criminal theft. What if he had taken only the code he had written? It is still theft, but you would have difficulty demonstrating criminal intent.

Software groups that intend to redistribute (ie, software vendors, such as those I have worked for) typically do a very good job at keeping open source separate from proprietary code.

In my experience, many organizations that use open source internally only, without intending to redistribute, don’t do a very good job of this. In fact, sometimes individual developers bring in open source code without telling anyone in order to get a head start on a development effort.

I have no knowledge or opinion of what might have happened at GS. I do find it difficult to believe that Aleynikov would have taken it upon himself to return open source code used in his job back to the community. Sometimes, however, developers think of code they have written as “theirs”, to use either as a part of their demonstrated expertise, or to reuse in future projects.

I haven’t seen any evidence that the government simply took GS word for it and unfortunately we don’t have the reason the conviction was overturned but the way it reads it is over the applicability of the particular law that the prosecutor chose to use.

So does the government prosecute with such zeal every complaint made by private citizens? I think not. Also, you usually have to provide evidence that what was taken was of material value. My point is that the government shouldn’t just take Goldman’s word that they were wronged, without providing evidence. Is there any public record of the code in question? The engineer’s claim that the code was open source could be very easily verified or debunked.

If the engineer violated his agreement by taking code with him, it’s a civil case. The government turned it into a criminal case, and tried to use statutes that were not applicable.

http://www.cnhedge.com

Also if it was purely open-source why does he need his own copy? If he made material modifications then that is his companies and he was planning to steal it in order to give him a head start at his new company.

As for buying the power of the government, when you report a robbery are you “buying” the power of the government? Or do you think they should tell you to go sort it out in the civil courts?

Aleynikov said it was open source code, so unless Goldman wants to prove otherwise, they have no case. This isn’t a national security case where they won’t disclose what was taken, they are claiming injury and they should have to prove it. Otherwise, it’s just a wealthy organization being able to buy the power of the government.

I’m oversimplifying here, and not passing any opinion on what happened in this case, but the end result that many users of open source software have no intention of redistributing, and may make proprietary additions without good documentation on how to distinguish between the two. It’s not good programming practice, but I would guess that this occurs often.

I ask because looking over some of the documents in the case, it does appear that the defense made various arguments about the intent necessary to satisfy the criminal statute.

I also ask because I know zip about programming.

Would appreciate help.

Thanks.