

Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer? (2013) - theoutlander
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer

======
lucozade
TL;DR Programmer gets sent down for stealing proprietary code.

Gets released on appeal due to, what appears to be, a procedural issue (it
doesn't go into much detail).

From my point of view, the chap blatantly stole the code. The whole premise of
this article is that that's ok 'cos it probably wasn't very important code.
Right.

My only take away is that the US has some seriously out of kilter sentences
for these types of offences. 8 years is absurd.

~~~
mkorfmann
> From my point of view, the chap blatantly stole the code.

It was open source code he slightly modified. The piece says that some parts
where directly related to the Goldman Sachs high-frequency trading code base,
but utterly useless when taken out of context.

What makes you believe that he "blatantly stole the code"?

~~~
lucozade
Because he worked for a major investment bank.

It's irrelevant that it was modified open source code. Wouldn't make any
difference.

As a dev employee he simply doesn't get to choose what is and is not
proprietary to GS. That decision cannot be made without the involvement of
compliance and legal.

And he would have known that. No question.

So, even if he didn't attempt to cover his tracks (which it sounds like he
did) he performed an illegal act.

Obviously, without actually knowing what code was taken it's impossible to vet
his assertion that it was useless code. It could well be (it's entirely
plausible that he just wanted to give back extensions to FOSS code). But,
unless GS had explicitly licensed that code otherwise (clearly they hadn't) or
he had an agreement with GS that he owned the code (clearly he hadn't) he
stole the code belonging to his employer.

------
mkorfmann
Fuck, now I'm angry. Is the story continued somewhere?

