[GPL not mentioned in article; my recollection from the original court documents is that the code was largely LGPL and GPL code]
I also see no mention of the GPL, only open source. So the license could've been BSD or MPL etc.
Also this part might be illegal:
>Later, at his trial, his lawyer flashed two pages of computer code: the original, with its open source license on top, and a replica, with the open source license stripped off and replaced by the Goldman Sachs license.
I'd like them to share the information they create, but I think it steps on others rights if you start trying to force disclosure of information creation.
jeez, those banks pay a pretty penny.
The actions this guy was sued over are likely all things that he had done before.
* misleading title. Goldman Sachs stole nothing.
* This guy steals code from Goldman Sachs.
* Covers his tracks. There is almost no reason why your password ever ends up in your bash history. If it does, you edit out only the password. Or you put a space before the command you run. At any rate, this guy should have known how to prevent his password from getting in the shell history and had no reason to delete his history.
* The guy talks to the cops
* Waves his rights to a lawyer
* Signs a confession
* Lets cops into his house without a search warrant.
* Doesn't testify at this trial.
This guy fully deserved what was coming to him. Goldman Sachs did nothing wrong here.
As to clearing bash history, this isn't criminal, it's just a wise security measure. I've certainly cleared various log files when I knew they contained exploitable credentials. Why the heck would you waste time editing out specific statements? It's not like a bash history is valuable in any normal circumstance.
By the sound of it, he certainly didn't think he was doing anything wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have been helped the FBI so thoroughly.
Sounds to me like nothing he did would have been a problem if he'd have been upfront about it. Basically, Goldman encouraged an atmosphere where people went it alone, implicitly (but not formally) giving them permission to do what they want as long as it gets the job done. Now, after the job got done, they change the rules and screw their employee, who by all accounts did get the job done.
Frankly, if somebody needs to go to jail, it's his boss, by the sound of it.
* First and most importantly, if you want a true log of history this can and should be achieved using a different mechanism (not effected by history -c).
* There exist bad CLI's which require entering the password on the command line. See the conversation below -- it took six posts on HN before the correct solution (make sure certain env vars are set to the right values) came out. So, hardly common knowledge.
- In fact, you space trick doesn't always work. Can I fire you for negligence if someone finds your .history since everyone should obviously know everything about bash history?
* If you run "man history", the very first thing you see is the -c option. Therefore, if you want to clear a password from your history file, this is mostly likely how you'll do it. You're effectively attributing criminal intent to anyone who's not sufficiently unix savvy.
* If you're treating .history is a log file, then you're being pretty damn close to criminally negligent with your logging practices (equivalent of providing an editor for apache's access.log on your homepage).
* Bash history files are not backed up, except perhaps accidentally with the rest of ~.
* History files rotate out after X commands. There is no way of guaranteeing that temporally-defined backup policies snapshot ~ before X commands are run.
Bash history is a "log file" in the same sense as the stack used for Word's "undo" mechanism is a "log file".
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6475524/making-sure-comma...
TIL! Good tip!
Let's say that I'm employing you to write a trading platform. You research the field, find some OSS that can serve as a base to work from and modify it to my specs. I own the modified code and can report you to the DA if you take it and try to sell it somewhere else.
Now if instead, you just take the original OSS you found, and the knowledge you gained working from me and go somewhere else to build a trading platform based on that original source, I have no case against you (assuming you aren't using my trade secrets) since you haven't taken anything I own.
Does that help?
How does this work with the original copyrighted code? If I take 10k lines of an open source project, tack on an echo or a comment or some nonsense, do I suddenly get to claim ownership of the rest of the code? It would make sense that you could own the delta, but you should only own your delta, not the original code.
"Owns" in quotes because that's not ownership, it's a license to use, modify and distribute the code within certain limitations. I've been dealing with IP lawyers recently over exactly this issue and they're being sticklers over the difference.
In March 2011, Aleynikov appealed the conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court's decision denying his original motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim.[9]
On February 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, with opinion to follow.[10] Aleynikov was released from custody the next day.
On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[10] stating:
On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a "stolen" "good" within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[9]
In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings, and his career is ruined.[11]
The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit's ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[12]
On August 9, 2012, Aleynikov was re-arrested and charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.[14] on behalf of New York state, with the offenses of "unlawful use of secret scientific material" and "unlawful duplication of computer related material"[15] based on the same conduct. The state prosecution was initiated based on a signed complaint by the same federal agent, McSwain, who led the investigation of the failed federal prosecution.
[..]
[..] and rejected the prosecutors' plea offer of accepting a single count offense and serving no jail time.
--
If that isn't malicious, I don't know what is. Charging someone acquitted for the same conduct, only to then offer him a plea deal of no prison time? What is the point here?
Should there be?
Goldman Sachs had every right to request that he be prosecuted, but no matter how the case turned out, his life would be ruined. I don't know of a good solution to this issue, but it just seems very wrong. I'm sure there have been countless instances of this happening though.
Maybe a good solution would be to lessen the penalties for this type of crime.
Maybe a legal requirement for a public apology and for the prosecutor to have to pay back legal costs? A portion of this restitution should come out of that courts budget or the department that perused the case without doing their due diligence.
Did Sergey sign something saying that he could never remove code from the building or use it in another project? I'm not sure that it simply being company policy is enough, in my opinion.
Has anyone here ever taken code from one employer with the intent of using it again if needed, simply to save time and not having to duplicate research? Should you be considered a criminal for that? Should you have to pay back the time the company paid you to write that code?
It seems like the lessons are:
1) Don't talk to police, even if you did nothing wrong and they tell you they are on your side. Lawyer up.
2) Don't steal code, but if you do then encrypt it and put it on a portable media device. Uploading to a foreign SVN repository using the companies network wasn't very smart, don't do that.
3) Ensure that your employees know the company's policy on removing code from the premises. It seems pretty obvious but I believe that Sergey honestly didn't think he was doing anything wrong.
0) Don't work for Goldman Sachs. Dance with the sharks, and they'll bite your arm off eventually.
1) Avoid GS like the Satan. Actually avoid the whole financial industry.
Goldman Sachs didn't "jail" this person. Goldman Sachs is a corporation, and therefore doesn't prosecute nor jail people.
Please leave this nonsense on Reddit.
Quotes from the book, p.148 (EDIT: These quotes are in the article here also!!):
"What Serge did not yet know was that Goldman has discovered his downloads- of what appeared to be the code they used for their proprietary high speed trading stock market trading- just a few days earlier, even though Serge had sent himself the first batch of code months ago. They'd called the FBI in haste and had put McSwain [FBI agent who arrested Serge] through what amounted to a crash course in high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later concluded that he didn't seek out independent expert advice to study the code that Serge Aleynikov had taken, or seek to find out why he might have taken it. "I relied on statements from Goldman employees", he said. He had no idea himself of the value of the stolen code ("representatives of Goldman told me it was worth a lot of money"),or if any of it was actually all that special ("representatives of Goldman told us there were trade secrets in the code")."
"The FBI's investigation before the arrest consisted of Goldman explaining some extremely complicated stuff to McSwain that he admitted that he didn't fully understand- but trusted that Goldman did. Forty-eight hours after Goldman called the FBI, McSwain arrested Serge."
So effectively Goldman got Serge arrested, using a clueless agent as a pawn. Some of the code was originally open source, none of the code involved trading strategies (the really valuable stuff) and Goldman's word was enough to convince the FBI that Serge was a dangerous criminal and a flight risk, and ruined his life.
Here is his Github account:
You can find his posts on Erlang's mailing list once a while.
Two of his interesting project I am following:
https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec -- a utility to control OS process from Erlang.
https://github.com/saleyn/eixx/ -- Erlang to C++ interface.
He's a very friendly guy and was quite willing to work with me on the patches I contributed to erlexec.
An organisation counts the same as an individual, and as long as code stays within the organization that doesn't count as 'distribution', and Goldman Sachs is under no obligation to release the code. They even retain the rights to prevent the code being released.
It's easy to hate on Goldman Sachs for many things, but in this case they didn't violate the GPL, and Aleynikov did commit a crime.
This infuriates me to no end. These engineers need to be rounded up, and given a serious life lesson on the reality of markets. Knowing your product/service's worth is step 1 of any free market activity.
Engineering is the only profession where the most talented engineers occupy the lowest compensation brackets with respect to their worth. All sorts of bullshit excuses are made up for this (my favorite - they're "Specialists"), but the bottom line is they are not being compensated at anywhere near what they're worth.
This is why startups, and consulting firms, are so key. If the market you're trying to enter is too big for a small operation (like Wall St.), then just consult. Those 20 superstar programmers need to meet up and start a consulting firm. Then, they sell their services to these banks and charge them whatever they want (read: a lot).
They then use this compensation to hire the best engineers from across the world, and keep them out of Wall St's hands. This wouldn't be too difficult, because Wall St would never match salaries because they are traders, and would die before they paid an engineer more than themselves.
To all of HN: please don't underestimate your worth. It hurts everyone, including yourself.
and aren't they being underpaid because they are seen as replaceable?
I work in a similar environment and I'm fully aware that if I do something remotely like bringing my code from work home, holy crap I'm committing a very VERY serious crime and my employer would go after me as viciously as they could. Very especially if I were to be going somewhere else where this code would set me up to make a new competing engine.
Pushing stuff to SVN and mailing seem innocuous... but depending on what you are actually passing around they can be extremely serious crimes.
It's really not that difficult to comprehend. And it's really not as bad as it sounds, if you want to work in your projects for fun, you do it in your own time. And you can still leave, it's just that if they catch you doing shit like this, it's not going to go down well.
Wait, what?
$> history
...
12345 some_command --username myusername --password mypassword
This comes up fairly often with poorly designed CLI's. Wiping your bash history after running the command isn't an unreasaonble hack.
Edit/Addendum: Although there are other (perhaps better) ways to achieve the same effect, the main point is that doing a "history -c" should be considered no more suspicious than e.g. closing a document to clear your "undo" history.
read -p "Password: " -s password; some_command --username myusername --password "$password" US master spy Clapper says spies steal open source, then immediately
claims ownership and classifies it, and prosecutes if the material is
disclosed, like Goldman Sachs.
that cracked me up!
In fact it sounds as if the defendant actually phrased most of the confession himself...
Obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
Sorry if I fail to have much sympathy. If you play in the big leagues, you should at least have some sense of self preservation.
Sergey's Legal Defense Fund - http://www.aleynikov.org/
1. Do I want to make unbelievable amounts of money?
2. Can I do so without running afoul of the law?
It's worth noting Aleynikov had over a decade of very relevant work experience prior to joining Goldman with a starting salary of $260k.
Yes, that's a good salary. However, it's not like top 1% developers with 10+ years of experience will have a tough time matching that outside of the financial sector.
These are things no sane person should do, especially if they're innocent.
"My code is freely licensed open source, Based on GPL, with the addendum that Goldman Sachs can go stick their head in a pig"
As I understand it, there is nothing preventing this from happening.
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).There appears to be every indication that agent McSwain did everything short of taking explicit marching orders from GS.
The FBI either lacked the will or ability to understand the crimes they were tasked with investigating. I find that disturbing.
"Serge tried to explain why he always erased his bash history, but McSwain had no interest in his story. “The way he did it seemed nefarious,” the FBI agent would later testify." Whom is the FBI agent referring to, McSwain or Serge?
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 provides statutory rules under which adverse inferences may be drawn from silence.
Adverse inferences may be drawn in certain circumstances where before or on being charged, the accused:
* fails to mention any fact which he later relies upon and which in the circumstances at the time the accused could reasonably be expected to mention;
* fails to give evidence at trial or answer any question;
* fails to account on arrest for objects, substances or marks on his person, clothing or footwear, in his possession, or in the place where he is arrested; or
* fails to account on arrest for his presence at a place.
Where inferences may be drawn from silence, the court must direct the jury as to the limits to the inferences which may properly be drawn from silence. There may be no conviction based wholly on silence. Further it is questionable whether a conviction based mainly on silence would be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
> while I appreciate this is a US legal case, in the UK the right to silence can be used against a defendant
as you correctly identified, only inferences in a somewhat defined range of cases can be made.
> One thing that puzzles me, though, is how am I supposed to know what I will rely on in court before I am on trial?
if you fail to answer a question during the investigation, and then later rely on the answer of that question in court. before you get anywhere near a court room, you must know what you have been charged with, arrested, and interviewed, etc. (unless of course you're a terrorist, then, you know, fuck you)
and yes, the ECHR wouldn't be happy with any inferences drawn from silence. i'm sure if a case hinged on these inferences, and the defendant was found guilty, an appeal to them would likely be successful.
although you wont want to hold your breath waiting for it, ~7 years is a long time..
If, on the other hand, I have said nothing other than "I'm not speaking without discussing with my lawyer first", it's much easier for your legal counsel to paint you as just a cautious individual, rather than someone that is trying to cover up a lie.
tldr, "don't talk to the police" is also good advice in Commonwealth countries, not just the US.
I'd love to attend that guy's lecture (what school is this? what is his name?), it's informative, he's funny. Makes me want to retake the LSAT.
A strange exception - somewhat at odds with the GPL's goals, surely? - but it doesn't seem to follow from the text of the GPL itself.
> Each licensee is addressed as “you”. “Licensees” and “recipients” may be individuals or organizations.
> To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
> All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.
> You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force.
You state in your profile that you are a student of philosophy. As a person who studies philosophy too, I am really curious, how would you describe your philosophical views?
As for HFT and Goldman Sachs, people are simply bashing based on jealousy of more successful individuals in a different sector, without actually investigating the topic. Like here, where apparently many don't actually read the GPL.
As for philosophy, that's a topic in itself, but let's just put it this way - I had one foot inside the door of a monastery (figuratively), instead chose a different path. Regardless, in worldly matters I prefer a rational approach to knee jerk sentimentality and sensationalism..
To be honest I am even confused about what precedent you are referring to?
If there are no repercussions this will happen again.
I guess he can sue them in civil court but does he have the money for the lawyer? Does he have a chance?
I think the real issue is whether or not he was acting maliciously, what the damage to Goldman Sachs was (basically none), and whether or not the punishment fit the crime.
Maybe companies should be forced to have an exit interview for programmers with access to information the company deems sensitive and make sure the programmer knows that they are not allowed to take any code with them.
I seriously doubt Goldman Sachs had any problem with him using/participating in non-secret open source as long as it was part of his work for them. Claiming this was stealing is sophistry - sure, he doesn't sound like a very clever (in the sense of cover-your-ass) guy, but if he'd have been open about what he did, there's no doubt that if he indeed was in anyway important to the company they would have OK's considerably more leeway if it contributed to their bottom line.
As is, they're simply abusing the lack of legal canny of their victim here. Which just goes to show - don't work for Goldman Sachs if you're smart - why take this kind of risk if you can get lots of other opportunities...
You should read up on Project Innocence casefiles:
http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/
Dennis Fritz in particular, he volunteered to give hair samples which were used to create circumstantial evidence against him:
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Dennis_Fritz.php
Had he not done that, had he not gone in to talk voluntarily to the police he probably would not have lost 11 years of his life, lost seeing his daughter grow up. All for talking with the police. Do not talk to the police. The cost can be unimaginably high.
That seems wrong (unfair) that the state can go after someone for a crime after the federal government has already acquitted that person of the same crime.
It would be like being acquitted in russia and then charged in argentina.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_Clause#Dual_sov...
The “dual sovereignty” doctrine is not only tied into the existence of two
sets of laws often serving different federal-state purposes and the now
overruled principle that the Double Jeopardy Clause restricts only the
national government and not the states,[55] but it also reflects practical
considerations that undesirable consequences could follow an overruling
of the doctrine. Thus, a state might preempt federal authority by first
prosecuting and providing for a lenient sentence (as compared to the possible
federal sentence) or acquitting defendants who had the sympathy of state
authorities as against federal law enforcement.[56]
55 Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), extended the clause to the states.
56 Reaffirmation of the doctrine against double jeopardy claims as to the
Federal Government and against due process claims as to the states occurred
in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), and Bartkus v. Illinois,
359 U.S. 121 (1959), both cases containing extensive discussion and policy
analyses. The Justice Department follows a policy of generally not duplicating
a state prosecution brought and carried out in good faith, see Petite
v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 531 (1960); Rinaldi v. United States, 434
U.S. 22 (1977), and several provisions of federal law forbid a federal
prosecution following a state prosecution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 660, 1992,
2117. The Brown Commission recommended a general statute to this effect,
preserving discretion in federal authorities to proceed upon certification by
the Attorney General that a United States interest would be unduly harmed if
there were no federal prosecution. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON REFORM OF FEDERAL
CRIMINAL LAWS, FINAL REPORT 707 (1971).
IOW: don't try to take the code your employer paid you to write/modify and use it at another job.
It is surely open source. It's just not Open Source. An important difference because of the capitalization.
So that even if they're speaking out loud, where one can't see capitalization, everyone knows what they mean.
At that point if you're motivated by more cash rather than not being seriously screwed, well, you don't sounds rational to me. That cash just doesn't have much value to you, and the risk does have cost to you.
The penalty here was disproportionate to the crime, sure, but Serge clearly took code owned by GS and uploaded it, without permission, to a 3rd party. Pretty cut and dry case of corporate theft here...
He was stupid. He should have made his intentions clear from the start, and he might well have simply gotten permission. As is, what he stole may well have been more akin to a using company laptop solely for personal use - certainly some kind of fraud, but probably also the kind of activity that the company might well have condoned if he'd only have asked.
Of course, without knowing what that code was and to what extent it was written on company dime, it's hard to say whether this was more like a bureaucratic oversight, a minor but intentional infraction, or a serious bit of fraud.
Regardless, it definitely sounds like Goldman really abused this guy. Keeping people in the dark about their true worth as negotiating strategy, and encouraging single-person whatever-works-goes work ethics (which may well be a form of intentional plausible deniability given the firms history) sounds to me like they treat their employees like exploitable resources.
So sure, I'd hope everyone would think twice before accepting a job offer there - because they clearly will stab you in the back when it serves them to do so.
In other words
Yep, but that prosecutor lied just to try to win the case. He was disbarred and sentenced to one day in jail and a $500 fine after attempting to ruin several peoples lives just so that his win/loss stats would be slightly better.
Courts have said that the players can pursue charges against the prosecutor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong
They also didn't bring charges against the woman who falsely accused the lacrosse players of rape. She has since been convicted of several crimes including attempted murder and second-degree murder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Gail_Mangum#Arrests_sin...
I've seen it on other Wikipedia pages about hot issues, but those pages were the worst. I wouldn't trust a thing I read there (or about any hot issue on Wikipedia).
But that was the reverse situation. The local prosecutor was representing the weak (a local stripper) against the powerful (the Duke lacrosse players, some of whose parents were powerful inside-the-beltway PR experts). They ran a nationwide media campaign vilifying the alleged victim and the prosecutor; you're a local DA or a stripper and you turn on CNN and see that? What hope do you have to compete? Hire a national PR team? I remember the NY Times coverage (which I usually greatly respect) pretty much repeating the lacrosse players' side point by point.
Think of all the egregious prosecutorial misconduct you've read about; why was this one disbarred? When the United States Attorney General is weighing in on a local rape case and the state bar is threatening you, you know have messed with the wrong people as a prosecutor.
Whatever happened between the lacrosse players and the stripper, the outcome had nothing to do with the facts or justice. They were tried (really she and the prosecutor were) in the press and were successfully prevented from having their day in court, where they are given an equal chance to speak -- it is supposed to be the leveler in our democracy.
Copyright of code belongs to the author of the code, or a company that employs him.
If they took say GCC and then replace copyright notices on it, it doesn't become their code, they are using it under a license from the original authors. Replacing a header in a file doesn't magically give you complete control and copyright over it. That would be silly and it would nullify most of the open source software licenses.
What we are isn't limited to what's inside our body and brain. The objects we interact with also count to an extent. (Being a cellist, makes me acutely aware of that.) What counts the most is any information stored in those objects, especially information you can't retrieve elsewhere —notes, journal, and other such personal data. Losing that information is like losing a memory. Being stored in a hard drive, a paper book, or a human brain doesn't make much of a difference.[1]
So, when I write some code for a company, I have the right to remember it, and I will exercise that right. That's basic human dignity. If our current power structure (err, "legal system") says otherwise, then it should be reformed.
On the other hand, I can restrain myself, and avoid to disclose all those memories, say, in a public SVN repository. I don't like to keep secrets, but let's face it, I already do, and it doesn't bother me too much. So, I treat corporate copyright as a form of non-disclosure agreement: I won't tell anyone.
But I will remember.
---
[1] looong footnote:
Really it doesn't. One day, it may even make no difference at all. We don't have the technology yet, but imagine having a computer wired to our nervous system. It could act as a pair of Google glasses 5.0, or augment our intellect more directly: more working memory, more and more accurate term memories on silicon, even perfect recall.
Now you can't even make the difference between neuron memories and silicon memories. They're both equally a part of you. Heck, your whole brain could be turned into silicon, it probably wouldn't make any difference. (I happen to believe in "mind uploading". I won't justify why here.)
Now let an employer ask you to delete whatever copy of the code you may still hold. Now it is quite literally asking you to erase part of your memories. What exactly should you erase, anyway? Just enough to disable perfect recall? Keep whatever happens to be stored in neurons, and erase whatever is in the silicon part? What if you have stored everything about that company in silicon? (You may well have, if perfect recall makes you more productive, and requires silicon memory.)
If we had the technical means right now, I believe Goldman Sachs would have us forget everything we learned while working within their walls, if not more —like in the Paycheck movie (2003). I think we can all agree it wouldn't be acceptable.
Within that framework, plenty of things are clearly out of bounds, like copied source code. I would argue that re-implementing chunks of code that you know to be economically valuable and unique to your former employer from memory is just as problematic.
Now, by out of bounds, I mean breach of a civil contract. I don't see the criminal aspect.
Basically, there's no need to erase your memory, you just need to distinguish exchanging your time for money from exchanging your former employer's IP for money.
If I switched companies to make a new system from scratch, it would take me a non-trivial amount of time to replicate a full system, and I probably wouldn't do it the same way. Even if I did it the same way, it would be hard work. During years of work one encounters many little problems, glitches, and even random ideas that don't come to mind so easily.
Obviously the previous experience helps a lot but having your old code basically bootstraps you. And the reason that coders in this sector are paid well, is that obviously the expertise is worth more than the code itself looking into the future. But still, if you do something really stupid like giving them an excuse to lock you up when you're going to a competitor, then you're screwed. I'm pretty sure Aleynikov would agree with me that he fucked up massively by taking his code home. If not, then he'd be out of touch with reality. The very thought of trying to do what he did makes me anxious. Big corporations are powerful and can fuck your life up.
Otherwise, if they catch you violating trade secrets you'll get your arse in jail just like Aleynikov.
I doubt there will be a day when there are no secrets and no trade secrets. But in any case, that isn't the case right now. There's a part of the industry that can afford to work fully within Free Open Source, but it doesn't pay anywhere near as well as financial & banking (generally speaking). You can choose to make less money and not surrender completely your work done during office time to your company. Life is full of choices.
Indeed, this article convinced me not to work for Goldman Sachs. Really, the way the story was depicted, it looked like they had the freaking Feds in their pocket. Less powerful firms however wouldn't be nearly as dangerous.
Also, don't confuse keeping a secret vs forgetting the secret altogether. When I take some source code home, I don't spill the secret, I merely remember it. The trade secret has not been violated yet. Though I reckon that putting it in a public svn repository would. So, when G.S. is asking me to not copy anything I have written at work home, it is asking me to forget.
I'll need a whole heap of money before I accept such scandalous terms.
> Life is full of choices.
For now. Depends what becomes the norm later. And I must say, I am genuinely afraid of the sci-fi scenario I have depicted above. One day, we will have these direct brain-computer interfaces, and corporations, if they still exist, will try and have you genuinely forget about the work you have done for them upon departure. It will be like working for 5 years at a firm, going out, and not being more experienced than you were before. This cyberpunk outcome is a very real possibility, and in some ways, it has already began.
But let's speak about right now. We're supposed to have rights we can't waive. Like many forms of freedom: you can't enslave yourself, no matter how much they pay you or your family. 'Cause you know, if it were possible, people would enslave themselves. You'd have to be a die-hard right-wing libertarian to believe it's an acceptable downside for the additional freedom to enslave oneself.
Likewise, I believe the right to remember should not be revocable. Our memories are part of our identity. When we lose them, we lose ourselves. To the extent we can lose them, we must do so freely. Doing it for money is not doing it freely (there are similar arguments against prostitution).
Or people are tired of getting ripped off by white-collar criminals who never get prosecuted. Goldman Sach's reputation is one they earned. I'm not saying Goldman Sach's is guilty in this particular situation, but their past behavior warrants keeping a close eye on them.
Seriously though, almost all posts about the financial sector here go something like: "They're overpaid, they rip people off, why don't I make as much money since programming is so difficult and requires so much education, etc...".
Yet somehow people on HN forget where funding for start-ups comes from... They benefit from the system yet complain about it all the time.
I don't understand how is it possible to combine these two statements of yours into a coherent worldview:
> 1. People are simply bashing based on jealousy of more successful individuals in a different sector.
> 2. I prefer a rational approach to knee jerk sentimentality and sensationalism.
Either you have rational arguments that support [1] or your [2] statement is false and [1] is precisely what you claim you don't engage in -- sensationalism.
And relative transgressions of GS to other banks doesn't matter at all. The list of controversies surrounding GS is really long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies
115 history
116 history (1 space)
117 history (2 spaces)
118 man passwd
119 passwd -a (1 space)
120 history
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# don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history.
# See bash(1) for more options
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
Provenance for /etc/skel/.bashrc:
dfc@ronin:~$ dlocate /etc/skel/
bash: /etc/skel/.bash_logout
bash: /etc/skel/.bashrc
bash: /etc/skel/.profile
dfc@ronin:~$ apt-cache showsrc bash |grep ^Vcs-
Vcs-Browser: https://code.launchpad.net/~doko/+junk/pkg-bash-debian
Vcs-Bzr: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~doko/+junk/pkg-bash-debianWhy not have a shell command called 'nohist' to wrap a command line?
It seems like a waste of everyone's time to even pursue a case such as this after it's determined that the person didn't have malicious intentions.
Could the owner of the modified code successfully sue Goldman Sachs?
Wrong. In HFT, the 'strategies' are the least complex part. They are often dead simple. A well written (fast) exchange connection is at least 70% of the game.
He's a thief and he got caught, but the HN community don't like that narrative.
And he didnt steal code, he backed it up on a subversion repo. There was unlikely any malicious intent, yet you labelled him a thief. If he was so obviously a thief, why would HFT experts be furious what happened to him, once they learned the details? Why were charges dropped? Why use an agent with no clue in the matter as a pawn? What you're saying doesn't make sense.
"Goldman Sachs Steals Open Source, Jails Coder"
Which is a lie.
It depresses me that even HackerNews upvotes headlines they know are untrue, if it suits the cultural narrative.
Also, from the point of view of efficiency in society, this is a particularly nasty cost since its borne not by those that cause it (the officers), nor by those hiring them (the government), nor is it ever accounted for as a loss. I think this encourages malpractice. Certainly if you observe how the police go about enforcing the law once they've decided somebody is guilty in their own eyes there doesn't seem to be any kind of restraint whatsoever. To the extent they can, they're single-party judge, jury and enforcement in one, exactly the kind of thing the idea of a justice system is supposed to prevent.
The author, Michael Lewis, actually conducted an informal trial in a restaurant, with (neutral) HFT experts, who were even more furious than Serge was when they learned how he'd been treated.
I wouldn't be surprised if non-technical executives in Goldman simply saw a Russian leaving for a competitor, and assumed he was stealing valuable secrets without investigating properly.
Worst part is, even after the details become apparent (see other comments here), Goldman or the FBI are completely unable to admit any fuck ups, and continue hounding him.
It's not just Goldman Sachs. Even a company like EA or Activision, which make videogames, would crack down hard on you if you took source code produced during company time and brought it home or to your next employer.
> Also, don't confuse keeping a secret vs forgetting the secret altogether. When I take some source code home, I don't spill the secret, I merely remember it. The trade secret has not been violated yet. Though I reckon that putting it in a public svn repository would. So, when G.S. is asking me to not copy anything I have written at work home, it is asking me to forget.
Nobody can reproduce an exact piece of software of high complexity from memory. Nobody. Re-doing it implies some redevelopment and it's accepted that you can do that. Same for the reuse of expertise gained during your stay in the company. These are legally different things and a distinction between these can be made in court.
> I'll need a whole heap of money before I accept such scandalous terms.
These terms are absolutely logical in the environment of that work. If you were the employer in that situation you would do the same. If you take what is essentially a competitive betting bot and take it to the competition, you immediately destroyed a massive amount of future wealth for your ex-employer. This is why these terms are agreed in the contract, because your work would be worth a fuck-ton less under the premises that it won't be useful in the very near future.
HFT Markets are a bit like a game of team poker. If a member of the team violates your pact and goes around explaining your exact strategy and giving away your cards, he's actively damaging your bottom line. And he's doing so against contract and law, without which life would be a lawless nightmarish jungle.
> We're supposed to have rights we can't waive. Like many forms of freedom: you can't enslave yourself, no matter how much they pay you or your family. 'Cause you know, if it were possible, people would enslave themselves. You'd have to be a die-hard right-wing libertarian to believe it's an acceptable downside for the additional freedom to enslave oneself.
Working is typically surrendering part of your life and your freedom for money, so you can have more time and more freedom without having to worry about things like having a roof above you to sleep and eating every day (slaveries we're born with). And generally satisfying your needs and wishes.
> Likewise, I believe the right to remember should not be revocable. Our memories are part of our identity. When we lose them, we lose ourselves. To the extent we can lose them, we must do so freely. Doing it for money is not doing it freely (there are similar arguments against prostitution).
Remembering is one thing, keeping verbatim copies of your work (and its interactions that imply the work of others, but even leaving that aside) is a very different thing.
It takes a massive sense of entitlement to violate your extremely generous contract in such a way.
My company pays me well, takes no more than 37-40 hours a week of my time and gives me full weekends and around 30 days a year that I can choose to my heart's content. The amount of freedom that this affords me, I honestly don't think I could get it elsewhere. If I thought otherwise I would be doing that instead. I do what I want most of the time. If I was, say, in the African savannah worried for my life day and night, I'd be extremely less free that I am now. Same for a work that paid me so little that I had to be worrying about my basic needs being covered in the near future, or forcing me to make many choices in basic things like food or living space. Freedom is not an absolute and it's always a matter of compromise.
I suspect Aleynikov's case wasn't too different. Just because sometimes work is boring and you have to deal with a codebase that is not like you'd dream to have, it doesn't entitle you to do what he did, which is being a massive twat, on top of a criminal. I think he's likely a great guy, but he fucked up. He seems to trivialise what he did and he may think it's not severe enough to go to prison. He's (or was) wrong. Hopefully he learnt the lesson.
If I pay good money for a painting, the author can, generally speaking, freely paint the same again or even an improved version of my painting. But he cannot come and pick my painting claiming that I cannot keep his memories because they're part of his life or some bullshit of that sort. With software that competes in the market based on its trade secrets, it's similar. By copying it and making it available to others you are subtracting value from the original rendering it basically worthless (especially so in the case of an HFT engine). Not all duplication of encoded information is the same.
In anglo-saxon cultures crimes against property are very, very serious. And they're so for very good reason. Property is money and money is basically everything. Money is what buys you freedom, even life. Denying this reality is self destructive both in the individual and the societal level.
> Nobody can reproduce an exact piece of software […] from memory. […] Re-doing it implies some redevelopment […]. Same for the reuse of expertise […]. These are legally different things […].
I agree 100%. But I'm not debating the facts, nor their legality. I'm questioning the law itself. I'm saying the distinction is somewhat arbitrary to begin with. Speaking of which:
> Remembering is one thing, keeping verbatim copies of your work […] is a very different thing.
This we disagree about. As I said in my first comment above, it is not so different. In a few decades, it may even become utterly meaningless (I mentioned perfect recall enabled by brain-computer interfaces). I welcome any further counter-argument. In the meantime, I will just add this quote from Gwern http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition
> I’ve had to say many times that I don’t know what I think about something, but whatever that is, it’s on my website. (A more extreme form of the Evernote/Mnemosyne neuroprosthetic.) A commenter once wrote that reading gwern.net felt like he was crawling around in my head. He was more right than he realized.
More generally, where is the limit between you and the outside world? In my opinion, the answer is not as obvious as it looks, especially when considering transhumanist ideas.
> HFT Markets are a bit like a game of team poker.
Yeah, that bothers me: it looks like a zero sum game, with very little benefits for the world as a whole (actually, I have seen argument saying it's bad for the world —mini krashes and such). I mean, is it even fun?
> If I pay good money for a painting, the author can, generally speaking, freely paint the same again or even an improved version of my painting. But he cannot come and pick my painting claiming that I cannot keep his memories because they're part of his life or some bullshit of that sort. With software that competes in the market based on its trade secrets, it's similar.
While I see the similarity, I cannot help but notice the difference. Your enjoying a painting doesn't rely on others not having a perfect copy. (Unless you must be "the one" or something.) The value of your trading software however does rely on the ignorance of others. Your right to keep it secret suspiciously looks like a right to take advantage of others.
I have another problem: competition is the zero-sum part of the game. By itself it is useless. The idea is to get positive externalities, such as plain better products on the market. Keeping your algorithms to yourself doesn't sound a good way to foster these positive externalities. Especially when the whole game is a big, complicated variant of rock paper scissors.
Overall, I distrust entities that rely on secrecy.
> My company pays me well, […] The amount of freedom that this affords me, I honestly don't think I could get it elsewhere.
Looks like you have made the right selfish choice. Others aren't so lucky. Many are overworked, and many others are unemployed. The sheer numbers suggest it can't be all their fault. It would be like feeding 100 dogs with 95 pieces of meat, then scolding the 5 starving dogs for not being competitive enough. There is a case for collective action. There is a case for changing society. More specifically, there is a case for a 4 day work-week: it would grant many people more freedom, including you.
> In anglo-saxon cultures crimes against property are very, very serious. And they're so for very good reason.
Again, I agree.
I will note however that the so called "intellectual property" you hint at have very little to do with actual property. It is a misleading term, with inaccurate connotations. Both "intellectual exclusivity" and "intellectual monopoly" would be more accurate.
So, when you take source code back home, you're not violating property. You're potentially violating secrecy. Which may or may not be just as serious. Nevertheless, we have a case of conflicting rights: the right to remember on the one hand, and the right to secrecy on the other hand. Since companies are not persons (except legally), I would tend to give the priority to the humans' right to remember. That said, I'll do my best not to harm my former employers: last time I saw him, my boss was still human —I worked at a small company where the two CEOs own most of the stock.
> money is basically everything. […] Denying this reality is self destructive both in the individual and the societal level.
Couldn't agree more. Which I why I'm so scared of the fact so few people have a say in our monetary policy. Those who control money have far more power over us than any politician ever had. (Except dictators. Maybe.)
What to do about the open source licensing? Presumably some of the stuff was GPL'd.
It doesn't grant the programmer any ownership of the code, nor any rights to take a copy of what he wrote with him.
No, "it would be like being acquitted in Russia and then charged in Moscow" or "it would be like being acquitted in Argentina and then charged in Buenos Aires".
This is exactly why it is not like being acquitted in russia and then charged in moscow. Being acquitted in russia and then charged in moscow would be double jeopardy.
Although the Court had long accepted in dictum the principle that prosecution
by two governments of the same defendant for the same conduct would not
constitute double jeopardy, it was not until United States v. Lanza[53]
that the conviction in federal court of a person previously convicted in a
state court for performing the same acts was sustained. “We have here two
sovereignties, deriving power from different sources, capable of dealing with
the same subject-matter within the same territory. . . . Each government
in determining what shall be an offense against its peace and dignity is
exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other.”[54] The “dual
sovereignty” doctrine is not only tied into the existence of two sets of laws
often serving different federal-state purposes and the now overruled principle
that the Double Jeopardy Clause restricts only the national government and
not the states,[55] but it also reflects practical considerations that
undesirable consequences could follow an overruling of the doctrine. Thus, a
state might preempt federal authority by first prosecuting and providing for a
lenient sentence (as compared to the possible federal sentence) or acquitting
defendants who had the sympathy of state authorities as against federal law
enforcement.[56] The application of the clause to the states has therefore
worked no change in the “dual sovereign” doctrine.
53 260 U.S. 377 (1922).
54 260 U.S. at 382. See also Hebert v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312 (1924); Screws
v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 108 (1945); Jerome v. United States, 318
U.S. 101 (1943).
55 Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), extended the clause to the states.
56 Reaffirmation of the doctrine against double jeopardy claims as to the
Federal Government and against due process claims as to the states occurred
in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), and Bartkus v. Illinois,
359 U.S. 121 (1959), both cases containing extensive discussion and policy
analyses. The Justice Department follows a policy of generally not duplicating
a state prosecution brought and carried out in good faith, see Petite
v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 531 (1960); Rinaldi v. United States, 434
U.S. 22 (1977), and several provisions of federal law forbid a federal
prosecution following a state prosecution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 660, 1992,
2117. The Brown Commission recommended a general statute to this effect,
preserving discretion in federal authorities to proceed upon certification by
the Attorney General that a United States interest would be unduly harmed if
there were no federal prosecution. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON REFORM OF FEDERAL
CRIMINAL LAWS, FINAL REPORT 707 (1971).
Also, doenvoters, if you believe that Federal govt tramples your rights and power should be returned to local authorities, consider the consistency of your internal logic.