It is rather hard to give advice about a situation like this. It is definately much harder to be in the situation, but at the same time it is hard to think of solutions to things like this. It is very risky.
One possible solution, as some have already suggested, is to try to help the independent author anonymously. However, there is still the risk of getting caught.
Here is an idea or two to help out. When you sign up for the email account at yahoo or hotmail or any service like that you will, of course, want to sign up using fake information. However, you might want to increace the level of false information you give. On a day off, drive to a different city far away and use an internet cafe to send the information. This way they cannot even trace the IP back to the city you live in. While at home make notes on where the company is continuing to use the code and send the developer the information. Be an informant in a sense.
However, if you are caught you risk violating any NDA's you may have signed. This could leave you wide open to litigation and lawsuits, depending on the terms. If you decide to take an approach similar to this one, you have to be prepared for being caught.
I know several TA's for some of the upper level computer science courses here at my college and I as well am a TA for the introduction course. There are some things I hear them stress over and over. Debugging I don't know much about the AP curriculum. However, one common problem is that many students (at least at my university- which shall remain nameless) do not know how to debug programs effectively. If this seems like it isn't a problem with the class you may still want to stress this finer point with them because information does become forgotten over the summer. This is a skill that they will be able to use with any operating system, language, or programming interface. Effective debugging will also help to save them time as they write larger programs later.
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It is rather hard to give advice about a situation like this. It is definately much harder to be in the situation, but at the same time it is hard to think of solutions to things like this. It is very risky.
One possible solution, as some have already suggested, is to try to help the independent author anonymously. However, there is still the risk of getting caught.
Here is an idea or two to help out. When you sign up for the email account at yahoo or hotmail or any service like that you will, of course, want to sign up using fake information. However, you might want to increace the level of false information you give. On a day off, drive to a different city far away and use an internet cafe to send the information. This way they cannot even trace the IP back to the city you live in. While at home make notes on where the company is continuing to use the code and send the developer the information. Be an informant in a sense.
However, if you are caught you risk violating any NDA's you may have signed. This could leave you wide open to litigation and lawsuits, depending on the terms. If you decide to take an approach similar to this one, you have to be prepared for being caught.
I know several TA's for some of the upper level computer science courses here at my college and I as well am a TA for the introduction course. There are some things I hear them stress over and over. Debugging I don't know much about the AP curriculum. However, one common problem is that many students (at least at my university- which shall remain nameless) do not know how to debug programs effectively. If this seems like it isn't a problem with the class you may still want to stress this finer point with them because information does become forgotten over the summer. This is a skill that they will be able to use with any operating system, language, or programming interface. Effective debugging will also help to save them time as they write larger programs later.