[HeyLaughingBoy]

It's not exactly the same crime. The appeals court basically said he didn't violate any Federal statutes. However it's very likely that he violated New York statutes (taking the property of a New York corporation).

IOW: don't try to take the code your employer paid you to write/modify and use it at another job.

[niels_olson]

> don't try to take the code your employer paid you to write/modify and use it at another job.

What to do about the open source licensing? Presumably some of the stuff was GPL'd.

[PeterisP]

What about open source licencing? If Goldman Sachs takes GPL software, modifies it and uses it internally without distribution, then they are perfectly compliant with the licence.

It doesn't grant the programmer any ownership of the code, nor any rights to take a copy of what he wrote with him.

[jwatte]

But the corporation allegedly removed the GPL license and put /only/ their own license on it. How is this not a Federal copyright offense?

[djcapelis]

It's only an offense if they distribute it because that is the thing that necessitates having a license to distribute the work.

[mutagen]

I think one would leave the source alone and encourage the copyright holder on the GPL'd code to bring a civil suit for violating the terms of the license rather than trying to enforce personally enforce the GPL.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

But GS didn't violate the terms of the GPL since they modified code was for internal use and not distributed elsewhere.