RE: Foundstone - keeping free tools from the public

["Greg van der Gaast" <greg.van.der.gaast () ordina nl>]

My initial wording was a bit on the strong side. I do recognize that
this might be a justifiable legal action on the part of Foundstone.
However, there's been quite a few times where Foundstone has *ahem*
borrowed code to use in their own projects before and some of these
projects ended up as commercial products (I don't know how well this is
documented but I've heard this from 2 separate Foundstone employees).
This is not only illegal due to its violation of licenses but it also
makes their actions somewhat hypocritical. You also can't expect people
to leave the company and not go do something at least similar to what
they we're doing before they left. Its their job and with projects its
something they've likely spend the last year of two researching.

Despite all this, it is really the wording of the TRO (*FUD*) that makes
me doubt Foundstone's intentions are purely honest.

My 2 cents...

Regards,

Greg van der Gaast
Ordina Public West
Security Services

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: ronstevens () hushmail com [mailto:ronstevens () hushmail com] 
Verzonden: Monday, October 14, 2002 8:38 AM
Aan: security-basics () security-focus com
Onderwerp: RE: Foundstone - keeping free tools from the public


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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