Quote: Originally Posted by RBob Which would be the fastest method of shutting down DIY development of OBD2 open source. There is a method to the madness. The non-disclosure agreement to work for hyper would negate everything that Dimented has done so far. And lock him out of releasing even a single little tid-bit of information to the public. To the point that he wouldn't even be able to post on our DIY_PROM forum. The non-disclosure can also make all the work previously done by the individual property of hyper. Which means that person no longer has any ownership of it. I've been there and have personally had this. Not to mention what it will do to one's individuality. It is a pact with the devil. Anyone interested in the call from Bill, trend lightly. RBob. I don't think anyone here is naive enough to think there aren't others that are looking to create their own open source software, there is always going to be someone with the knowledge to do so. The honest truth is we currently support over 40 different control modules and have 3 engineers to handle them, the bottom line is thats not nearly enough and quite frankly its difficult to find good engineers that know what their doing and even harder to find ones that are already in the industry or already car guys which believe it or not really does help from an engineering standpoint. Just my .02 -Bill

Id be lying if I said I was not interested in the offer. But, this is exactly what went thru my head when I first saw it. Im interested in opening up a dialogue channel with HP, but the non-disclosure agreement would have to be the very first thing to be settled.

My previous experience in the buisness world is that binding contracts like these can be an extremely prickly thing to deal with.

If the contract just extended to the work at HP tuners (which I have my doubts that it would) and no farther, then that would not be an issue. Im very respectful of intellectual property and would not reveal any work done for them while being a paid employee. My fear is exactly what RBob said, that it could be all encompassing, meaning that my current public domain work with the '411 would have to come to a halt, and become property of my potential employer, namely HP. That opens up all kinds of issues from a legal standpoint. It would require me to self-censor when talking about anything related to PCM tuning, lest litigation be brought on me for breach of contract. That's an unenviable position to be in.

My personal thoughts are that there is a middle ground in which each party's information can be kept seperate. As the old saying goes: "render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's", but when money is involved, the issue seems to quickly get very muddy.