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Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:2543 misc.jobs.misc:9104 Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,misc.jobs.misc Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!haven.umd.edu!socrates!ice From: ice@socrates.umd.edu (Fredrik Nyman) Subject: Re: AT&T sues BSDI Message-ID: <1992Jul25.222121.20426@socrates.umd.edu> Organization: University of Maryland University College References: <QUANSTRO.92Jul21140234@lars.StOlaf.edu> <1992Jul21.235727.4693@unislc.uucp> <FSTX.92Jul22102314@meryl.csd.uu.se> <1992Jul22.235604.27104@exlog.com> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 22:21:21 GMT Lines: 45 mcdowell@exlog.com (Steve McDowell) writes: >In message <FSTX.92Jul22102314@meryl.csd.uu.se>fstx@meryl.csd.uu.se (Fredrik Stax{ng) writes: >> If AT&T wins, wouldn't that mean that in computers, you can't switch company >> without switching careers? This claim could be applied to any company that >> employs programmers that has worked for any other company before. > How about this, from one of last week's "Wall Street Journal"s. It > follows the same line of thinking that AT&T seems to be using in > this BSDI thing. It's pretty scarey for anyone doing sensitive, or > proprietary, work who's looking for like work elsewhere. > [Quote about IBM vs its ex-employee Peter Bonyhard deleted] > The article goes on to say that IBM is warning other employees that have left > to work for the competition. This raises another interesting question: layoffs. With the recession, fierce competition and all, a lot of companies including IBM, Digital, Prime and Wang have laid off large numbers of people, and killed many product lines and projects. If you're a software or hardware engineer and get laid off today, finding a new job will be difficult. Also, it's very likely that you've specialized in some narrow field such as parallel processing, office automation or whatever. If IBM wins this lawsuit, it may have tremendous affect on people who have gotten laid off since it would severely limit where a laid-off employee could work and what (s)he could work with since hir former employer could argue that the employee possessed proprietary information and hence mustn't be allowed to work with the same things for a competitor. Another interesting thing to ponder: One of NeXT's founders, Bud Tribble, recently left for NeXT's archrival Sun. As VP of software, Tribble must have had access to nearly all NeXT secrets. Now, Tribble left because the people working under him voted "no confidence" in him. If IBM wins this lawsuit, I suppose that NeXT could sue Tribble to keep him from working with software in general and user interfaces in particular even though Tribble had no choice but to leave. Comments?