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

[Brian Waite]

On Thursday 17 April 2003 4:42 pm, nathan r. hruby wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Tremblay J. wrote:
> > NDA ??
>
> 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.

I think NDA's are still extremely helpful for open source companies. Many 
companies will put a developer under NDA to let the see things like errata, 
road maps, and specs. These drivers are then open sourced as functional 
drivers but the actual fundamental IP is still hidden. This about it this 
way. I am a company that is build a family of cards. It would be good for me 
to give the guy I am paying to do my software a bunch of HW specs along with 
a peek to where we are going. I have specs all over my desk that read Company 
Confidential on them and I write open source for them. Without NDAs there 
would be no way companies would let even one bit of code into open source 
because they'd be afraid whatever contractor they had do the work would start 
telling thier competitiors how it works.  At least this way we get to play on 
almost the same field as MS when writing drivers.

Just my 2 cents

Thanks
Brian