The shareholders are the VC investors. If they want to rip apart one of the few people around that managed to execute manufacturing a real hardware product and getting it shipped rather than stay on good terms and get in on his next idea, that's their decision. Foolish, but it's their life.
It seems fair that they wouldn't want to encourage this sort of thing; founders/employees of a company can't just start a new company and use information from the existing one to start it up. Criminal charges seem pretty heavy, but it seems like what was done here wasn't right.
I have seen former employers get the FBI to come after ex employees who used lists, data, etc. expropriated from the company. All it takes is a phone call. Really, its not the company's choice anyway... if the law has been broken, the authorities pursue it at their own perogative.
Has a law been broken? I don't agree with all the people stating a law has been broken without saying which one. Smells like smearing someone. Accusing someone of committing crimes is very serious.
He was still the President and founder of WakeMate when he sent an email about a new thing he was getting into. He didn't hack into an account he had no access to - it was his account. The article claims he didn't "get permission". Get permission from who? It was his account.
Claims this is "criminal" are absurd, ridiculous, and libelous.
On the other hand, the story discusses that the code that is owned by what is left of the company is going to be open sourced, essentially given away to the general public. This code is the real value of the company and likely cost millions to develop. Was this move approved by the shareholders? It does not say that it was. This move is something that the company owners could object to. It's blatant theft of company property and transfer of it to others. Have the VC owners of the company and thus the code signed off on it? Even if they have, it might not be relevant. Since it appears they are out of money, is the company in bankruptcy court? Do they owe suppliers? Are they going to go through bankruptcy or not? Transfers of the core company assets at this point should not be done without the approval of a judge, not even the VC "owners". If they have debts and assets (the source code) and reallocate those assets to others knowing that they are going to have to declare bankruptcy, that is fraud. The code usually would be sold at public auction and the money then used to pay off debt owned by the company, which may include unpaid bills, but may also include salary owed to the principals to wind down the company in a way so that assets can be sold for a reasonable amount. I see no indication that anyone involved in preparing this code for open source release is going to be paid for it. They are under no obligation to do so without pay even if such a move was approved by VC owners and/or a judge.
More to the point: the customer list is the intellectual property of WakeMate, and has commercial value to the company.
Using the customer list without reimbursing WakeMate (or some other arrangement, including for example WakeMate contributing the customer list to MiWhatever in exchange for stock) is essentially theft of IP. This is a crime in some states, but generally just means that MiWhatever owes WakeMate a check for licensing (or purchasing) the IP.
