Non Disclosure Agreements

Dave Restall - System Administrator (dave@restall.net)
Thu, 21 May 1998 20:30:05 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to write the bits for a Scanace II from PIE and I wrote to
them a while ago for technical details. After a month, nothing had come
back so I recopied my letter and asked for an acknowledgement. I got :-

1) An acknowledgement.
2) A promise to do something.
3) A word document entitled "PIE's Scanner engine ScanAce series SCSI
Technical Reference Manual"

Yesterday 2) turned into a "We've got the data but before we release it
could you sign this NDA" email. Consequently I have a lot of
questions.

The technical documentation came from a different source within the
company (I sent my letter to two separate support addresses). My
questions are :-

1) If I get the NDA and don't agree with it, I don't sign it, what is
the position regarding the technical documentation ?

I'm not particularly worried about transmitting the stuff to anybody who
is interested, however SOMEBODY inside of PIE may lose their job because
they sent out the document before the parasite^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlegal
advisors got their hands on it.

2) When the NDA comes along could I post it to the list for others to
peruse and advise.

3) If there is a heavy ND clause, does Sane need to have the source
code.

4) Other scanners are supported and these must have either been reverse
engineered or the manufacturers have had some form of input, what is the
general method used when say dealing with Umax or HP, do they ask for
NDA's ?

5) If I can't agree to the NDA, and can't release the spec (I won't
release the spec if I can't sign the NDA - as already mentioned I don't
want to jeopardize anybody's job) would I be safe in "comparing" the
spec with the open specs and saying "Use the drivers for XYZ" to get
this scanner working.

6) Help :-)

Regards,

Dave Restall
mail/sane/980521.tx sane
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Dave Restall Internet Intranet Resourcing Consultancy Limited |
| Tel. +44 (0) 1287 653003 Mob. +44 (0) 973 831245 Fax. +44 (0) 1287 652546 |
| email : dave@iirc.net dave@restall.net Web : http://www.iirc.net |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor |
| schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. 'man perlstyle' |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

--
Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/
To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe sane-devel | mail majordomo@mostang.com