NDA (WAS: Re: calling for the influence of the linux YDL community on sonnettech support team)

[nathan r. hruby]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Tremblay J. wrote:

> NDA ??
> 

Non-disclosure agreement.  A legal contract that you sign with another
entity which prevents you from telling the world about something the other
party is going to tell you, show you, or let you play with.  Typically
used with beta testers, 3rd party developers, employees, and partnership
members to prevent super-secret IP from esacping into the hands of the
comptetitors.  (Though an NDA can be applied to anything.. IIRC, most of 
Microsofts Devloper kits, etc.. including a NDA in the license)

NDA's normally aren't useful for OpenSource as most restrict what you can
do with the knowledge you gained from whatever was under NDA so writing a
open driver is.. well kinda out of the question.  This is why some
companies (like nvidia) produce binary-only drivers for the hardware, as
opposed to patches against source-code.

-n
-- 
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nathan hruby <nathan@drama.uga.edu>
computer services specialist
uga drama
http://www.drama.uga.edu/support/
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