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Foundstone Shoe On Other Foot
Cimmer writes "One of the premier hack shops (to pun or not to pun) gets busted for unethically ethically hacking.
After filing a lawsuit against former employee JD Glaser for supposedly jacking company source code, Foundstone gets nailed for massive internal software piracy. Tonight's entree: Foot in Mouth."
Read the damn links. Everything you mention is covered, clearly and pretty unambiguously, in the two fairly short articles cited.
In summary, though, lots of current and ex-employees of Foundstone are backing up claims that the guys at the top had wholesale software piracy going on in-house. This partly came to light as a result of going after another company, started by one former employee and now including several more, that developed a product in the same industry in a time that, according to Foundstone guys, wasn't possible without stealing their vitally important trade secrets. Except that they forgot to say what those secrets were, the other company's product was much smaller scale than the mainstream corporate offering from Foundstone, and most of the info is likely to have been freely available or at least widely known in the business, and not trade secret at all anyway. As a result of this lot, the judge who initially forbade the other company from shipping their product lifted that injunction a month or so later on the basis that there was basically nothing but someone from Foundstone's say-so that anything was wrong.
Now go read the articles, please.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
this is one thing that is really curious about winzip.
apparently they make so much money that they don't give a rat's ass about piracy.
Unlike other companies that update new versions to crack down key-gen'd code, winzip reg codes from windows 3.0 days STILL works up to the latest and greatest.
for example, load a copy of winzip, and type in:
anonymous
3DAE1000
and you got yourself a "registered," nag-free winzip copy. I thought they'd have patched it up by now, as myself have been using that code for a good 10 years now, but, well, try it and see, i guess.
posting anon for obvious reasons.
Either You setup a secure linux box and nessus to get free scanning, or if you want the corporate/easy/expensive option you get qualys which scans for more vulnerabilities than anyone else and can do this from 1U server appliance, rather than the half rack that Foundstone has been trying to sell to people.
Never mind the whole legal problems that they have and the fact that their talented programmers keep jumping ship.
Foundstone have too many liabilities and not enough of a product for the cost.
I like nessus, but they do have a habit of crashing services and incorrectly identifying services, and it's GPL - although I hear that nessus is somewhat ironicly violating the GPL by blocking off parts of it's update site to known 'competitors' including foundstone, ISS and qualys.
Found this on Foundstone.com:
FS Responds to Fortune
To our valued customers, partners, vendors and future customers,
The current issue of Fortune Magazine contains a lengthy article about Foundstone that significantly misrepresents the way we do business, and wrongly states that Foundstone does not respect intellectual property rights. I am writing to tell you some key facts surrounding this matter, and to correct some of the irresponsible misrepresentations and factual errors in the Fortune story.
Foundstone rigorously defends its commitment to protect intellectual property rights, and the intellectual property rights of other software makers. To demonstrate Foundstone's commitment to protecting the commercial use of other software, an independent, 3rd party audit was completed on May 2 (more than a month prior to this article). According to Harvey Liss, President of VLSystems, which conducted the independent audit, "The vast majority of the software applications running on the 510 active Foundstone systems were properly licensed. Including operating systems and applications, several hundred software programs are in current use by Foundstone and over 95% were identified as properly licensed. In our experience, having performed numerous software licensing audits, this is among the higher rates for pre-audit compliance." We recognize that for a company whose very foundations are built on protecting intellectual property, anything less than complete compliance is not acceptable. Our aggressive growth is not an excuse for non-compliance. We've taken the necessary steps to identify non-compliance and have immediately applied corrective action through new policies, procedures and education.
The sources and recent timing of these defamatory statements about Foundstone to Fortune Magazine is not a coincidence. Unfortunately, Foundstone was forced to file a lawsuit against NT Objectives, Inc. because of the misappropriation of trade secrets and our unsuccessful attempts in obtaining key information and a reasonable level of cooperation from NTO. Foundstone recently received some favorable rulings in arbitration that would allow Foundstone full discovery rights to review NTO's code. From the very beginning, NTO has vehemently objected to full discovery, even though they proclaim innocence. This Fortune article is a deliberate attempt to shift focus away from the facts of the case and divert attention to rumor, innuendo, and misinformation.
Our loyal customers and market standing speak for themselves. While macro economic factors are negatively impacting other high-tech firms, Foundstone continues to buck the trend with impressive revenue growth, employee growth (Foundstoneâ(TM)s attrition rate is below the industry average), expanded product offerings, and solid financial stability. Foundstone respects the interests of our partners, vendors and associates, and will continue to deliver the highest quality products and services to meet the needs of current and new customers.
If you have any questions about this article, I invite you to call me or Stuart McClure and weâ(TM)d be happy to give you the facts.
Foundstone's troubles began last October when the company brought a trade-secrets case against J.D. Glaser, its former director of engineering, accusing him of stealing proprietary code.
This was, in my view, the pivotal point in the downfall of the company. It was Newton's Third Law of Motion in action. Foundstone poked Glaser in the eye, and Glaser poked back. The benches of the opposing teams emptied out on the field for an old-fashioned brawl. This human element in business and history in general has always served as a fascination to me.
If Foundstone would have let Glaser go off and start his company without the eye gouging would there have been this expose'? I think not. Perhaps the company's small regard for employees would have brought to a head problems brewing within the firm. Lots of companies are not nice to their employees; but, I don't think it would be such potent fodder for Fortune magazine.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Not if it's a corporate key, which doesn't call home to be activated.
Now, a pressing question is what about this is even news worthy? Slashdot is now helping rake a shop through the mud even though software piracy runs rampant in most businesses (especially those in the tech industry)? Are we now going to be subjected to stories like "company X accused of software piracy" where "company X" is any random org? Yes, "company X" probably has some pirated software floating around, but that doesn't mean they should get a slot on the front page. Besides, since when does the
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