Reply to post:

> But yeah - darn that evil Microsoft selling their software! ;)

To be fair, if you take your list (and add Microsoft to it), out of those you've only really got Microsoft and BAE where a leak of their software is likely to be a big deal to them (possibly Goldman too to some extent).

So if you start at a position of "Someone's software is going to leak (or has leaked)", then Microsoft is one in a list of two, and their business is based on the software itself, so they probably are at the top of that list.

All the others may well deserve to have something happen, but a software leak for them is unlikely to achieve the fuzzy feelgoods you want when saying "good, they deserve it". In fact, for some of those companies, it wouldn't be that different to hearing someone had broken a window in their building.

So OP was probably right, in that out of your list, there are 2 people who's business relies on the sale of software, Microsoft are the most dependant on it, so they probably deserve this the most.

But, you're right too - had your list been a list of companies in the same industry, Microsoft may not have been at the top (are they more deserving than Oracle?)