Re: philosophical question about sharing information

A lot depends on what your long term goals are. If you think in terms of the betterment of mankind, then the sharing is more likely than if you think of the betterment of yourself and your children. In either case there is a balance to be made. When you share some information you help yourself indirectly more than the sharing can harm you.

It is hard to predict the outcome of sharing information but history seems to show that in general sharing does good things for everyone.

ing

Certainly not. Contributions over the net can only accellerate development of mankind, not stop those who are good enough to stay ahead. If someone needs to protect knowledge other than that he himself has created (and thus has full control of) in order to stay ahead, it is better for all (except perhaps himself) that he is overtaken. And frankly, those I have watched being secretive about what they know never knew anything worth my interest.

Dimiter

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Original message:

There is no such thing as the sacred knowledge or the "key technical information" But the one who asks a question should be at least at the level so he could understand the answer.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

I doubt you'll find anything on 'usenet' that isn't in the public domain. Posters with original knowledge either know better than that, or are completely wacko anyways.

RL

I find it helpful to share techniques and resources. I've benefitted as much as I've given, met some cool people, and found one great employee so far. I wouldn't give away any really juicy trade secrets, but there's way too much paranoia in this business. I figure I can stay way ahead of the stuff I'm giving away... eat my dust if you like it.

But what do you exactly mean by "us"? Yourself as an individual? As a citizen of some city, state, country, race, or hemisphere?

Oops, the timer just went bing. The beans have soaked. Time to start assembling the cassoulet. This batch will include some Belgian beer and some beautiful duck sausage.

John

I just got back from the embedded systems conference, where I had an interesting conversation with some of the other speakers. One of the fellows travels to Asia quite often, and he's noticed that engineers in China and Korea last about an average of 5 years before they're promoted to management or leave the profession -- apparently engineering is considered a 'junior' position, and if you've been at it for over 10 years then you're clearly an incompetent boob.

I don't think we have to worry about the cultures that hold _that_ attitude. Indians don't, but they're starting to consume their own engineering resources locally as Indian companies start designing and building things for their home market instead of the US.

Personally, I think that in 10 or 20 years we'll be in a position to ramp up our engineering and manufacturing job sectors, if there's anyone around who remembers how to do it.

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Every manager I ever knew in any US company I worked for has that opinion, you think otherwise?

Insightful comments I heard from management during layoffs were "well, we only promote our best employees into management, so that is why we lay them (management) off last"

Or during an appraisal, when I told my new manager I had no interest in a management position he responded "Well your comment doesn't make any sense to me, everyone wants to become a manager, it's the natural progression of a career, it's your reward for doing a excellent job, I can only assume you are not performing at some aspect of your position, perhaps we can work on that this year, make it a priority, and some time in the near future you can achieve a management position and achieve the success and recognition you obviously deserve "

A brilliant and very common example! There are many people that want to stay in the 'engineering room.' Don't be disgruntled about your position, because you know things that these guys can't even cope with understanding. It makes them nervous - they react - don't understand the value of R&D. If you work for a company that wants to please the share holders (bag carriers), then think seriously about getting out of the corporate 'mind set.' Microsoft (to take an easy target, shit ok maybe nasa) do not work with communication intelligence properly. They are late in achieving ideas, filtering and looking after they 'own' through levels of management - to be too brief on the subject.

On the subject of sharing though, being clever in your descriptions to look good with your peers on your papers, doesn't help anybody else understand theories- take the ridiculous 'chaos theory' and fractal bollocks for example. It took years for the public to go - hmm nothing new then.

Every ten years there's another new research grant ready to get excited about - Wavelets? Global ice melting?

Oh well, what can you do! : )

Sorry, just venting. Ho-hum.

VC

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We're all familiar with the rationalizations used to protect members of the club. Nevertheless, the Peter Principle applies.

It's not that way all over. My manager at RCA Labs had me "minding the store" a few times while he was on trips to meet for a few days with people in other divisions. It didn't take me very long to figure out what was going on, and I told him that I saw my job as making him look good, and his job as getting me (and all the others) the resources needed to make that possible. I made it clear that I liked my job better. (Also, that I thought it was a lot easier.) So instead of becoming a manager, I accumulated three Outstanding Achievement Awards. There wasn't enough pay difference to bribe me upstairs.

Jerry

Depends what is being asked. Fundamentals of either academic science or general design principles are fair enough to share. Company secret information clearly is is not. Inbetween there is a wide grey area and includes ideas that if someone wants to take it and run with it I don't really care.

Unless you give away key business information probably not. I did point out to someone recently that they had posted way too much background information about their business idea in a public forum. We once made that mistake once early on by having a brainstorming meeting in a popular pub over many pints. Two of our competitors entered the same market at the same time as a result of that crass error (we were very young & naive at the time).

I don't see much point in keeping some well known methods secret. And I dislike spurious software patents on blindingly obvious prior art or mathematical identities even more. USPTO will grant patents on most anything these days and they never seem to know where to look for the right prior art.

I don't see that much risk in helping train the next generation to be better engineers.

Regards, Martin Brown

Were those wild duck? Damned swine eating everything in sight... too good to open a can of beef hash made from genetically modified beef fed genetically modified corn products or what is your problem.

I think your partly right. Community development has advantages but some of these advantages get hung up with local small changes.

Some new ideas just simply take more resources than an individual has to give. Look at the state of GCC. To go beyond where it is now it will take a major investment in the development of new technology.

Despite the combined efforts of a community the products of innovative companies produce more effective compilers. Rewarding innovation also moves the information bar forward, often in industry changing ways.

Walter..

I doubt it.

I like duck. It's really a shame that such nice, cute, cuddly critters are so good to eat.

John

While I'm not directly answering your question, you've touched a point that I often go over in my mind.

What I take a particular beef with is when a newbie posts a relatively simple question that could be answered in a line or two, and he gets completely ignored by the group. And then, a helpful but-less-than-expert-status guy comes along, provides a pretty good answer. If anything less than 100% of that answer is perfectly correct, the elders(or so they consider themselves) of the group harp on that person nitpicking his post apart to the point that nobody even remembers what the OP was asking for to begin with.

This further has the effect of shutting up most of the middle-of-the-pack, and so future questions go answered too.

It's funny that the elders won't bother to help the OP, but they sure have no problem correcting the semantics of the helpful reply. Plenty of time to criticize but no time to help?

Even if the newbie has failed to do the necessary research BEFORE posting, a friendly nudge to check FAQ #21 and #22 doesn't hurt anyone. And the, "did you google it?" response is equally unnecessary and unhelpful. Even a "I googled '555 +datasheet' and the third and fourth links look promising" is at least a push in the right direction.

Or, "did you check the datasheet?" instead of "find the datasheet for the part, looking under AC characteristics, your question pertains to the Todv and Thold minimums." Or "Yes, that datasheet for that part kind of sucks, try the TI datasheet, it's a lot more complete, and provides a better explanation of how everything works."

Why waste everyone's time by replying with a non-answer?

Ahh well.

Keith

I do try to answer all questions, however simple-minded, provided they're not obviously homework... then I _can_ be mean-tempered.

Bloggsy likes to blow his nose on everyone he considers beneath him... just filter him out ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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That's sometimes because the issue restated in the reply is often comprehensible, and thus something which can be discussed without playing "20 questions", whereas the original wasn't. The problem restatement in the first reply, of course, may have nothing to do with the OP's original ambiguous question; but if it's an interesting topic, it'll be more likely to garner folk's limited attention than the original sometimes seemingly random jumble of words.

The comp.arch subculture had a canonical type of response to questions which have too high a resemblence to homework problems: an absolutely correct answer that is completely useless for filling-in-the-blank. This behavior is akin to the TA who won't give a student the answer to a problem-set directly, but will instead start talking about some unrelated appearing problem, which if the student looks up and studies, might lead them to methods to solve the original question (and more) on their own.

IMHO. YMMV.

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well, i guess it becomes that (public domain) by the very act of putting it on USENET, if it wasn't protected by patent. but if it was a trade secret, i think after someone puts it on USENET, it's then becomes public domain. that revelation might not be someone in a company spilling the beans about some secret trick that they use, it could be someone's trade secret, and not knowing about that, another unrelated party who is thinking the same thing, could say as much and reveal someone else's "secret".

i guess i don't. i know that i posted some stuff here that i wasn't aware of anyone else saying the same thing. it was stuff that i didn't think was owned by anyone that i worked for (like it was knowledge that i had previously to working for these guys and i might very well have an old C program that ran on some old Mac that does it). i did it because i didn't think that someone owned the information, and because i think that, in the long term, "enlightened self-interest" is essentially my own best interest. there is stuff that Jerry and Randy and Ron and Vlad and Tim and Eric J and Dale D and Stephen J and others i can't remember have said here that have improved my understanding of something. might have helped me figure something out for work. but even if it may have materially helped me, it is beyond reason to believe that in some little tidbit or trick or fundamental concept that i missed, that somehow witholding that would benefit the witholder somehow, if that is just beyond reasonable belief, then i fail to see the harm with sharing useful information and i can really see the benefit.

i'm probably that.

r b-j

Feel free to discuss your own ideas without fear that someone else may already have patented something similar, if you are so inclined. This does not infringe on a patent; a patent's contents are not secret, but the property described is not in the public domain unless references exist of prior art that are in the public domain.

When it comes to infringement of patents and enforcement of patent rights, it's a case of user beware and owner be vigilant. That's the idea behind patent search, application and disclosure.

A trade secret is different from patented intellectual property, as it generally cannot be axactly reverse engineered or duplicated in ignorance without either a breach of contracted nondisclosure or an infringment of simple copyright.

If someone else thinks up the same thing, independantly, however, then that's their luck or misfortune, depending on whether or not a copyright is applicable. It shouldn't have to be if the knowledge is thorough.

If something isn't your idea or design, it's your responsibility to do due diligence of prior art before exploiting either. If it is your idea, you can give it away in clear conscience with the proviso that you have or haven't performed this search.

Some designs are so basic, they only exhibit common knowledge that are no loonger or have never been subject to patent or copyright. Be prepared to prove this, if challenged.

RL

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What does that mean? In the US, a patent will not be issued if publication precedes the application by a year or more. "Publication" includes Usenet and conference papers.

A trade secret is not property at all. If you keep a process secret and I discover it for myself, I can use it, publish it, or whatever. If you try to patent it in ignorance of the original invention and a patent issues, the earlier discoverer might be able to invalidate the patent by demonstrating priority, but he can't patent it. Check out "due diligence".

How does copyright enter here?

I don't get it. There has to be a lot unsaid if this makes sense at all.

Ir to prove the reverse, Is I have had to.

Jerry