Why is NDA so hard to understand?
- by Dave Campbell
Maybe this concept is simpler for me because of all the jobs I've been on over the years requiring security clearances.
I've signed quite a few NDA forms. Some for big companies, some for small, but the meaning of "NDA" remains constant: Non-Disclosure Agreement. To me, that takes no further explanation, but apparently it's confusing to some people, and I don't understand how you can be confused. The papers I signed with the U.S. Army in 1970 read "10 years and $10,000" for a violation... can't imagine what it's up to now, but THAT is a strict NDA :)
So those things I've been told, I cannot talk about, period. Even if the entire world knows about them, I cannot speak about them until the information goes off NDA.
An example was a Silverlight release a while back. It might have been Silverlight 3, I don't remember. Everyone was anxiously awaiting the release so they could post their material. Of course the entire world knew it was coming out and imminently so. Some enterprising folks had even found the bits on a server before the official announcement.
So then the situation became: everyone knew about it, some were even coding with it and blogging about it and yet we couldn't talk about it. Scott Guthrie's posting about it opened the flood gates and then it went off NDA, but up until that moment, we were locked.
Sitting out on the edge you're uninstalling and re-installing all the time and you get frustrated when things that used to work don't, but hey... those bits were still warm when you got 'em, and that's the fun. But that fun comes at a price, and the price is the NDA.
Awkward yes, confusing no...
See you at MIX10, and
Stay in the 'Light!
MIX10
