Ssh, don't tell anyone but open source is used at the biggest banks and finance houses in the world, but can you steal open source code?
I don’t know how many of you have been following the Sergey Aleynikov-Goldman Sachs theft case. Aleynikov was arrested and charged with stealing the source code to Goldman Sachs’ trading program. The prosecution claims he was going to use the code for his new employer. At trial it came out that most of the code Aleynikov stole was in fact open source code. Oops, there it is! The mighty Goldman Sachs is relying on open source code for its high frequency trading programs.
Putting aside the question of whether someone can “steal open source code”, the fact that Goldman was even using open source code raised a lot of eyebrows. For many years the financial industry was seen as the last bastion resisting the open source barbarian onslaught. It was thought that open source was not secure enough, there was no accountability, it didn’t give one institution and inherent advantage over another. But now it appears that Goldman is not the only one that uses open source on Wall Street and at other financial institutions.
While the financial meltdown shrinking IT budgets is an obvious reason for an increased open source emphasis (as this article points out), open source has been sneaking into the banking sector for longer than that. Whether it be Linux, Apache or MySQL, all have had footholds at the financial industry for some time.
In my own personal experience I have had to deal with the open source issue at finance institutions myself. The fact is that many security appliances that are protecting these banks are using open source technologies was not lost on them. End user license agreements dealt with detailing the open source contained on these appliances and warranties that it was used pursuant to license. Also many of these banks developed their own in house solutions that were also built on top of open source software.
So while they didn’t talk about it much, there was open source even at the largest banks and financial houses. Certainly as the stigma around using open source has decreased and the current economic client has forced cutbacks on budgets we are seeing an increase in open source use. But it should not be a surprise to anyone actually. The financial industry at the end of the day is not that different from other IT dependent vertical markets. The same thing that drives open source adoption at all of them also are in place in the finance sector.
On the issue of whether “stealing” open source code is illegal, it seems the jury has spoken. Aleynikov was convicted and faces jail time. Not all of the code he took was open source, just a lot of it. I am not sure the jury really understood the fine subtleties involved. But even if some of the code was not open source, he is guilty of theft. The question of can you steal open source code will be left for another day.
