What an awful thing to happen. This young man points out a flaw to do a favor to the school and the company who makes the software, and instead of fixing it, they hold the school accountable and this kid gets the boot? And not just booted, but his academic career obliterated without appeal.

I can understand that the board who voted to expel him heard that he had hacked into their systems and was caught before doing anything with it. And to any of us, that would be a reasonable thing to expel for in and of itself. But the awful thing is that they didn't even give the guy a chance to speak. I would bet that if he had the opportunity to explain his situation, the CS department would have definitely not been 14/15 in favor. This is what happens when justice is suspended for bureaucracy - his voice got crushed because the company demanded it. If I were in engineering hiring, I'd put an offer out to him because he obviously knows what he's doing, and is trying to do good with his abilities.

Between cases like this and the man who was charged with promoting illicit gambling in the US for writing software for foreign countries we've made the work of programming a minefield, where it's just safer to not touch anything, not break anything, and don't be too creative, or else you might face legal repercussions for daring to step on anyone's toes with your ideas. What kind of message is that? I'm really mad that this school decided to teach a lesson to this guy, and every other student and programmer, that going outside the defined box of your work is an offense punishable with expulsion.