Realistically (loopholes aside) - all of the code not under GPL would be theft no? (Goldman replacing the copyrights on other open-source stuff with their own is probably illegal (as long as the license stipulates that the original copyright notice must remain), but their modifications are still proprietary.
He of course could have had proprietary source code in his repositories for work in the first place - but bundling and uploading everything does look highly suspicious - and he should have known better.
[Goldman] called the F.B.I. in haste, just two days before, and then put their agent through what amounted to a crash course on high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later conceded that he didn’t seek out independent expert advice to study the code Serge Aleynikov had taken.
I'm not one of the people who would ever equate copying code to theft, regardless of intent. But Aleynikov admitted that he expected GS to be upset about it, mostly due to their cultural attitudes about IP (ie: everything is theirs). Note that he didn't "bundling and uploading everything" he specifically avoided uploading the trading strategies code.
On the one hand, people seem to be giving GS a pass for stripping the copyright notices from GPL'd code they used, but taking them at their word and treating it as high treason when Aleynikov makes a copy of the modified GPL code for himself.
>> "McSwain later conceded that he didn’t seek out independent expert advice to study the code Serge Aleynikov had taken."
>This is the very surprising part.
It's just the lazy careless work of a modern day Pinkerton man.
> Goldman replacing the copyrights on other open-source stuff with their own is probably illegal (as long as the license stipulates that the original copyright notice must remain)
It's only illegal if Goldman distributed it, which they didn't. It's perfectly okay to modify GPL'ed code for internal purposes without open-sourcing the changes.
>It's only illegal if Goldman distributed it, which they didn't. It's perfectly okay to modify GPL'ed code for internal purposes without open-sourcing the changes.
I'm not a lawyer but as far as I understand they were stripping the copyright notice, which is explicitly forbidden by the licenses. i.e. the MIT license:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
> The stripping clause only comes into place when you distribute the code, just as the GPL's copy-left requirement only comes into play when you distribute the code.
I absolutely wish this was the case: copying internally within an organization such as a school, a church, or a business should be legal for any purposes regardless of the license something comes with... However, I'd not be very certain of support of companies like Microsoft which would argue that their copyright licenses dictate usage within the organization and not just on distribution. And no, for these purposes there is no difference between Microsoft EULA and MIT license.
I'd imagine you can argue that you can argue that you are in compliance if you distributed a git (or hg etc) repository with an older version that does include the copyright notice though.
My point is just that at what point does distribution begin? The entertainment industry wants us to believe that if I buy a CD, I am violating copyright by the audio CD to an iPod (doubly so if to a friend's iPod).
The stripping clause only comes into place when you distribute the code, just as the GPL's copy-left requirement only comes into play when you distribute the code.
> The stripping clause only comes into place when you distribute the code, just as the GPL's copy-left requirement only comes into play when you distribute the code.
No, it doesn't. The stripping clause is a license condition with no limitation to distribution -- it expressly applies to all copies. Anything you need a license to do -- which is, anything that involves any of the exclusive rights tied to copyright (of which, the most prominent is copying, regardless of distribution) must follow it, barring an exception in the license or a some other provision of law that limits the applicability of the exclusive rights in copyright.
As well as the stripping clause of the MIT license, this is also true with regard to GPLv2 provisions related to copyright notices, which are required for both modification of GPL-licensed code and copying and distribution of GPL-licensed code, though the GPLv3 only applies this to copies that are "conveyed" (compare Section 2 of the GPLv2 with the combination of Sections 2, 4, & 5 of the GPLv3.)
Fair enough. Why does the FSF FAQ say you don't need to distribute source if you modify the code for internal purposes. Is it an explicit provision of the license?
He deleted his bash history. For all you know, that may have been a standard procedure.
Would you "cover your tracks" if you for some reason typed a password into the console of a machine that you don't own?