Hello,
Some days ago Loïc Dachary published an article[1], titled "Free Software Experts", requesting that free software developers apply for External Experts of the European Commission. This article was published on several news sites including gildot.org which is a kind of slashdot.org in portuguese. There was a comment[2] (in portuguese) from someone who was an Expert last year that mentioned that all Experts must sign Non-Disclosure-Agreements.
What follows is a message I sent to Loïc about this. In this message I give an example with Werner Koch/GnuPG because that was what GnuPKI inspired me. I hope Werner doesn't mind. :) Loïc thinks we should discuss this so I am bringing it to the mailing list.
[1] http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/article2001-08-23-01.en.html [2] http://www.gildot.org/articles/01/08/26/1212223.shtml
Hello Loïc,
The article published in gildot.org had only one comment so far. But it was an interesting article from someone who have been an Expert before. He mentioned that all experts must sign Non Disclose Agreements (NDA). Consider the following scenario:
Werner Koch applies to became an expert and he is approved. He signs the NDA. He is assigned the task of evaluating GnuPKI proposal, which he does. Some time later he adds some feature to GPG that is very remotely related to some work described on GnuPKI papers. GnuPKI says Werner is violating their intelectual property and sues him for violation of contract.
This is just an hypothetical scenario but I think it illustrates them problem. NDA's are never good. I won't sign one myself and I don't think any free software developers should sign them.
What do you think?
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 22:28:41 +0100, Ruben Leote Mendes said:
This is just an hypothetical scenario but I think it illustrates them problem. NDA's are never good. I won't sign one myself and I don't think any free
Frankly I thing that there are times where an NDA can be appropriate. For example, if you are preparing a bid for a a FS project together with a group of other companies, a NDA might be a good idea. Consider the case that one of the partners starts to play unfair and tells another group the details of the project and eventually this other group obtains the contract - oops. The other group might even be one of these semi-FS players. Having signed an NDA the partners are a little bit more intersted in playing fair.
So it really depends on the scope of the NDA and it should definitely expire at an appropriate time. I have never seen an EU NDA, although I did apply as expert last year and was accepted (actually without any project to evaluate - what a luck).
In general an NDA really hinders you to develop software.
Ciao,
Werner
...
So it really depends on the scope of the NDA and it should definitely expire at an appropriate time.
Doh! All this time I hadn't found a way to integrate NDA's with my OS coding- I had never thought of getting them to expire :) Brilliant, so obvious, yet I had never thought of it.
I think that solves a lot of problems people have with NDA's, and yet still allows the good points of an NDA.
Thanks :)
JohnFlux
Hello,
Maybe the Foundation should encourage real free software companies to send proposals to the European Comission. If one company doesn't have enough resources to make a proposal alone, it can partner with other free software companies.
By the way, is there a listing somewhere of real free software companies in europe and in the world?