bei@dogface (Bob Izenberg) (04/25/91)
It's been about a week since the last survey response, so here's what people
said. The questions were:
(1) Do you have access to the source code to any program other than one that
you or your associates have developed?
(2) If the answer to (1) was yes, were you given a non-disclosure agreement to
sign before you were allowed to access it?
(3) If the answer to (1) and (2) was yes, are all individuals with access to
the source code given non-disclosure agreements to sign?
(4) If the answer to (2) was yes, did it encompass source that you or your
associates had produced, or all source that you were given access to?
(5) If you have ever signed a non-disclosure or intellectual property rights
assignment document, would you get rid of all copies of the covered
items when you moved on to a new education or employment situation?
(6) Why or why not?
Twenty-nine of the thirty respondents said yes to (1). Of the twenty-six
answers to (2), twenty-four were "no" votes, one was conditional upon the
product (counted as a "yes") and one was an unconditional (but not emphatic)
yes. Somewhat surprisingly, people who didn't sign non-disclosure agreements
said that they knew some co-workers who had. The responses to (3) matched up
with (2) pretty well: twenty-three answered "no", two "yes". Those that
answered (4) said that the agreements they signed covered both in-house and
outside products. Question (5) got eight outright "no" votes, five conditional
"yes" votes and twelve "yes" votes. Interpreting the five fence-stragglers
was a judgment call: Each did retain a copy, after asking permission. I
took the high road here, assuming that they would have respected a turn-down
to their request as well. The responses to (6) proved pragmatic. One person
wrote,
I prefer to start fresh with each new project (or job) so I won't
bring any 'old' code with me.
but the majority agreed with what one respondent wrote,
Regarding item (6), our obligation is to not disclose proprietary information
to others, to not compete against the other party using disclosed information
and to guard the disclosed information with the same care as we do our
trade secrets. Beyond that, disclosed information becomes knowledge to
the receiving party. As such, knowledge cannot be withdrawn. Since the
actual documents or computer files are embodiments of that knowledge and
serve as a more permanent knowledge memory than what nature provides, there
is no objective to be met by destroying the copies.
One budding semanticist who read the last paragraph commented that the final
sentence contained a contradiction, that human memory is transient but a file
is forever. Obviously, she and I don't buy our disks from the same place.
But jokes aside, when the knowledge is in your head, it can't be withdrawn. If
it's a product on disk, tape or (!) paper, it can be. Once more, I'm out of
step with the majority... ;-)
Thanks to everyone who replied!
-- Bob
Bob Izenberg
cs.utexas.edu!dogface!bei [ ] "So young, so bad... So what!"
512 346 7019 Wendy O. Williamsjls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) (04/27/91)
] I prefer to start fresh with each new project (or job) so I won't ] bring any 'old' code with me. And thus, continues to set the cause of software reuse back into the stone age. -- * "Beyond 100,000 lines of code, you should probably be coding in Ada." * * - P.G. Plauger, Convener and Secretary of the ANSI C Committee * * * * The opinions expressed herein are my own. *