[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.