RE: Fast/400 hits the news again.... -- MIDRANGE-L

I am confused about some of this.

http://www.midrangeserver.com/tfh/tfh081604-story01.html

"...Apparently to IBM's thinking, the Fast400 product could only have been
written (and tweaked as IBM put on "tiger balm" into OS/400 patches to try
to thwart Fast400's operations) by someone who had illegal access to the
source code inside OS/400; whether it was original source code or decompiled
source code is unclear to me. IBM's interpretation of the many exchanges
that went on between Stracka and Lauderdale from late 2001 until that
meeting on November 25, 2002, is that Stracka was trying to extort $25
million from IBM to stop selling Fast400. Stracka contends that he was
trying to negotiate with Big Blue to sell his company, which makes a product
that enhances OS/400 server performance, and which was not created through
the use of source code or by decompiling binary code into source by
Svalgaard. IBM went to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District
of New York, explained the situation, got a warrant for Stracka's arrest,
and the FBI accompanied Lauderdale to that Houston hotel room. According to
Stracka, the FBI actually burst into the room with guns drawn in the middle
of the meeting. (And you thought the OS/400 market was boring!) Stracka was
arrested and thrown in jail until he posted a $500,000 bond the next day.
..."

Why would the FBI arrest Stracka and a federal judge set bail at $500k if
this was just about selling a reverse engineered software product?

-Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Don
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 1:36 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Fast/400 hits the news again....



Phil,

right on the money...

Heck, I remember all the crap IBM and COMMON gave him about having his MI
session at the Baltimore conference and expo.  Ever since then, it's been
a great session, once their paranoia subsided.... :)




On Mon, 16 Aug 2004, Hall, Philip wrote:

>
>
> Nope, you didn't miss anything - but given what was happening at the time
(i.e. the known response(s) from IBM), it's hardly surprising that he
*didn't* explicitly own up (he never explicitly denied it either) to writing
it - would *you* have owned up, back then ?  :o)
>
> --phil
>
>

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