Wow, that Mondaq article is really the opposite of objective. Author Dylan W. Wiseman is really letting us know which side he's on with gems like "To correct the obvious injustice of the Aleynikov ruling..."
Aleynikov intended to monetize code which was technically Goldman's property, even if he wrote most of it. It would be a different story if he simply wanted to keep the code for archival and review purposes; he actually tried to help a startup by using it.
It sounds like he did violate the spirit of the law, if not the letter.
However I would also like to add that 8 years (+3 under supervision) is bonkers and completely disproportionate with the crime.
Just to put that into perspective, someone could commit rape twice and be out of jail first (3 years piece approximately, or 6-7 years total).
It seems like as soon as a computer is involved in a crime, the sentence gets quadrupled. Instead of breaking into someone's computer, you should just run them down with your car, you'll likely get off easier in the latter case...
I don't know if it was definitively proven that he copied the code with the intent of helping the new startup. The evidence the FBI found was that he had the code on a laptop when meeting some of their founders, but I don't believe they had proof of what his intent was or proof that he shared it with them or that they were even aware of it.
He claims he did not intend to do any such thing:
>When he left, Sergey Aleynikov took a segment of code with him that was based on open source, but had some alterations that technically made it proprietary Goldman Sachs software.
>According to Sergey Aleynikov, the software was of no consequence to his job at Teza Technologies, but once they realized he had taken a segment of code from their servers Goldman Sachs contacted the FBI and within 48 hours Aleynikov was in custody.
So I would say the sentence should be based on the proven intent. If he really did intend to use most or all of the codebase while at the startup to gain them an edge, then I think a jail sentence is fair (though I agree 8 years is way too long). Otherwise, probably not, at least depending on how accurate his story is of what % of the codebase was open source originally.