[zacharypinter]

I think there's two aspects to this discussion that keep getting muddled together.

1. Were the individuals at the companies in question knowingly acting outside their own ethics or the ethics they portray themselves as having? Was there something "sinister" about this?

2. What harm did these actions cause and do we need to do something to prevent such kinds of harm in the future?

A lot of #1 sounds like execs trying to manage the relationships with the companies they worked with. It doesn't sound like there was a big taboo around these types of do-not-solicit agreements at that time, and with all the players aggressively trying to hire and hold onto experienced employees I can see how finding out that a partner company was targeting the employees you were trying to keep around could be interpreted as a hostile/unfriendly business move. The most damning thing I've come across regarding #1 was the email about taking the conversation offline to avoid a paper trail. Would love to read more about the context of that.

I wasn't sure about #2 at first, but after all the discussion I've been strongly persuaded that this is a net negative for the software industry. The lawsuits and public outcry will hopefully create a strong taboo against this sort of behavior in the future, in addition to clarifying the legal ramifications. Is there anything more that needs to be done here?