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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?