dgh@sun.com (David Hough) (04/27/89)
I don't know about other vendors, but a non-disclosure agreement with Sun (and as far as I know with many other vendors such as IBM) is intended to be taken as a serious contract. Releasing privileged information to our competitors is not in our interest, that's why it's privileged and only divulged under non-disclosure to current and potential customers in a few appropriate sales situations. In particular, I have heard more than once that a competitor rescheduled his product announcement to take place a few days before one of ours in order to steal some of our thunder. Their performance claims and pricing may have been adjusted based on what they had heard about ours. When you sign a non-disclosure agreement with Sun please take it seriously and not as a wink-wink nudge-nudge invitation to pass the information around. I'm sure Sun's lawyers will be glad to go into more detail about possible consequences of such actions. One for sure is that you won't get any more product previews.