RE: Foundstone - keeping free tools from the public

[ronstevens () hushmail com]

There are a lot of ways to look at this Foundstone ordeal but obviously there is the black and white legality of 
things. JD Glaser (NT Objectives) was the main architect and engineer behind any program that Foundstone did. Obviously 
when he decided to leave Foundstone, and take a few of the Foundstone engineers with him, to start back up NT 
Objectives, he was breaking some contracts he had with Foundstone. This is what all the legal matters seem to be about.

If JD Glaser (NTObjectives) had legal contracts not allowing him to compete, reuse code (IP restrictions), nor work 
against Foundstone (by taking some engineers from Foundstone to NTObjectives) then of course he is breaking the law and 
Foundstone has all the right to take him to court and sue the pants off of him.

I think all of the underlying aspects of this is what is the most funny. I mean come on what technology are they suing 
NTObjectives for? Last I heard NTObjectives "Fire & Water" tool was something that any decent programmer could put 
together in a weekend. Is Foundstone really suing over "state of the art" connect() scanner code and XML parsing? If 
that's the type of high-tech IP they are trying to protect then that's scary. Also, where does Foundstone even use any 
of this technology? Last I heard Foundstone's Foundscan product (or was it service?) was vaporware. I know that when my 
company looked into purchasing it we were met with nothing more than remote web demos and screen shots of something 
that was "coming soon."

So I guess that is what I find funny in all this... that NTObjectives (JD Glaser) and Foundstone (Stuart McClure) must 
have had such a falling out that now there is a legal battle over who has the right to super high tech port scanner 
code etc...

If Foundstone was doing good and was not scrambling to finish vaporware, with a now non-existent engineering team (at 
NTObjectives now) then I doubt we would see them suing over something as trivially simple as "Fire & Water" ... to me 
it seems like nothing more than childish backlash by Stuart towards JD. Do I disagree with it? Nope Foundstone has 
every right to sue NTObjectives.

But come on doesn't everyone have better things to do? This reminds me so much of dot com style jibberish.

Back to protecting my companies network and hoping the vendors creating my security software can grow up and work on 
better security solutions instead of petty lawsuits.

-Ron
CISSP,CCNE

| To: SECURITY-BASICS 
| Subject: Re: Foundstone - keeping free tools from the public 
| Date: Oct 10 2002 6:14PM 
| Author: <John_Buhler () notes tcs treas gov> 
| 
| I would say, read the order, and declaration.
| 
| This is not about withholding tools, or protecting the public, as
| NTOBJECTives, Inc., would have us believe.  It's about stealing | code,
| algorithms, datases, etc,  that Foundstone, Inc., wrote, and | protect as
| trade secrets.
| 
| NTOBJECTives is free to release the toolkit, after they prove to | the court
| systems, the code is original and theirs.
| 
| JB



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