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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

According to the original article, Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it. Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about either Goldman's conduct or the intentions of the programmer.

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Goldman was actually violating the license terms of the open source software it had modified by not releasing it.

I down-voted you because people keep saying that and it is false.

The Vanity Fair article uses the qualifier "possibly" when talking about GS violating the licenses and that's because none of the major license families (BSD, GPL, MPL, etc) have a requirement to release modifications if the whole is not released outside the organization that made them. The Vanity Fair article does not say that the code was ever distributed out of Goldman.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol...

And none of them have that requirement because distribution inside of an organization does not count as a distribution for the purpose of copyright law. (Though if you let people carry it out of the organization, that's a different story.)

That was a point in the original Vanity Fair article that really caught my attention because it seemed very wrong the way it was stated. None of us know all the details but--based on what was written in that article--it sure doesn't sound like a license violation.

I don't know details of this case but it's very unlikely GS was violating any FOSS license for just modifying code (assuming internal use only).

I think I see your point, but I wonder... do GS distribute code to their employees? To partner organizations? If so, what are the terms of that distribution? If they are anything other than the original license requires, that's a violation.

Oh noes, now we can't have nice things anymore...

I suggest you read the GPL faq which should help clear up some of the issues for you:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePos...

From the Vanity Fair article, it sounds like Goldman is in fact violating the terms of the license, but not in the way you're describing. (I.e., not by refusing to release changes.)

According to the article Goldman would routinely strip off the license/copyright from off of the open source code file and replace it with their own copyright. And that is a violation of many open source licenses.

I could be wrong, but wouldn't it only be a violation to release the code after stripping off the license/copyright?

Whoever modified the copyright headers then redistributes the files internally to other programmers and systems. You cannot modify a copyright to your liking and redistribute the work.

You can use open source code without giving up your modifications as long as you don't distribute it. Even if a GPL program is modified by GS and runs on their mainframes, GS is not required to release the source code.

You only need to release the source if you're distributing the modified code, which GS obviously would never do...

> a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare,

No, GS will have to pay because the defendant was an officer at GS.

> Further, while you and I may have our opinions, a judge found Goldman's actions to be so egregious that he ordered them to pay the defense costs for someone accused of stealing from them. That is exceedingly rare, and wouldn't have happened if there were any doubts about either Goldman's conduct or the intentions of the programmer.

I don't think this is at all what happened. I think a judge ruled that he was a director at the company and therefor the company had to cover any legal costs he incured due to being a director of the company.

As far as I can tell, Goldman's actions had nothing to do with them paying his legal bills.

Any Russian programmer consider any administrativelimitation stupid, amd has the most of the code carved in his wetware. GS and other bozos can try to sue you for keeping the code in your brain, since you obviously taking our brain home. Or do American programmistas leave their brain in the office to comply?

Oh please. If you're Russian, you and I both know that bureaucracy and administrative detail (especially in terms of printed contracts) is well and alive in Russia. Stop being obtuse.

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