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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
| 
| 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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