8. Fair and Legitimate Process

“It is easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.”

—Sebastien-Roch Chamfort, French playwright

Mark Ager’s firm had designed a software application that was earning rave reviews from its primary customer. The U.S. military employed the company’s innovative expert diagnostic system for the control, maintenance, and repair of sophisticated weaponry. In the late 1990s, the company’s engineers and programmers discovered, quite opportunistically, that a firm in the automobile industry had an interest in this software application. The company soon landed a lucrative contract with its first major nondefense customer. The technical staff worked feverishly to adapt the software to meet this client’s ...

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