The drama is heavy in the trial of Sergey Aleynikov, the Goldman Sachs programmer who has been criminally charged with theft of proprietary code. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. The trial is now in full swing, featuring the testimony of two Goldman Sachs managing directors about issues so sensitive that the judge closed the trial to the public for 45 minutes last week. 

The big issue so far seems to be "open source" code. Goldman and federal prosecutors maintain that Aleynikov, 40, one of the top programmers on the firm's sensitive high-frequency trading platform, downloaded code to take with him to his new job at Teza Technologies. On June 5, 2009, his last day at Goldman Sachs, Aleynikov is said to have downloaded the code to a server in Germany. He is also said to have transported the code on a flash drive to his new job. He was arrested at Newark Airport the next day. 

Aleynikov's defense is that he was merely trying to download the open source parts of the code and leave the proprietary code. To the extent that he downloaded proprietary code, it was simply a mistake, his team claims. 

So far, we're getting some interesting testimony about Goldman's information security practices. A prosecutor asked managing director Paul Walker about the zeal with which the company guards the code. "The lines of code were so confidential, he said, that the company guarded access by physical security in the building and enlisted additional services of a company called the Information Security Group", according to Courthouse News. "Goldman Sachs also monitored firewalls to look for outbound communication." 

But the prime focus is source code, which is in the public domain. Aleynikov's lawyer suggested that several lines of the secret Goldman Sachs code came from freely available and public sources, some of which can be found in textbooks. "Walker acknowledged that it is possible that 'in our 60 million lines of code,' certain lines could be found in textbooks," notes Courthouse News. "But Walker added that Goldman Sachs policy was to segregate open source code, which belongs to the public, from modified, proprietary programming owned by the company." 

Aleynikov's lawyer showed the Goldman Sachs MD a code sample Aleynikov allegedly stole, suggesting some parts were open source code. Walker acknowledged that it's possible some code was open source. Aleynivov's lawyer then suggested that "his client only downloaded the Goldman code to separate the 'wheat,' the 'naked open source software' from the 'chaff,' the modified code belonging to the company," according to Courthouse News. She also suggested that Aleynikov wanted to "return to the public what belonged to the public." To which, the Goldman Sachs MD said that it would be almost impossible to do that. But he acknowledged "that certain open source programs operate on licenses mandating that programmers 're-contribute' any changes or modifications back to the public domain." He "declined to say whether that could apply with the software Goldman Sachs developed; he said he did not have the legal background to offer an opinion." 

Courthouse News also relates some interesting testimony from one of Goldman's expert witnesses, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Unfortunately, for Goldman, the witness was featured in another code theft trial, the one involving a Societe Generale trader, in which the judge said he found the expert's testimony to be "utter baloney." 

The trial seems to be moving rapidly. It will be interesting to see if Aleynikov takes the stand in his own defense. - Jim