Slashdot; NDA

Amarok Blog

Friday, June 24. 2005

Posted by Ian Monroe in eean

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This is my first post that will be shown on the planet I believe. So to introduce myself, I'm Ian Monroe, a relatively new developer on amaroK.

Slashdot picked up the story I submitted about KDE, amaroK and Wikimedia. All credit really goes to Sven Krohlas for writing the original dot story. Anyways, this will give me some additional geek cred when I return to school this fall, as if I needed it.

Amarok.kde.org seems to be holding up fine. (The Wikipedia people always joke about wikipediaing Slashdot since Wikipedia is now a more popular site.)

A couple of days ago I had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement for my company. I guess it just shows how out-of-hand NDAs are getting. I'm a laborer at a textbook warehouse. Exactly what would I be disclosing. Book sorting techniques? The secret methods of stacking books? Anyways, it also means I'm not allowed to work on any book-related software projects for the rest of the summer. Not an issue. It does show what a foe NDAs can be to open source development that they at least claim to restrict what you develop even on your free time. I understand other states have different laws about this, but generally speaking Missouri doesn't offer much protection for employees.

Later today we get the results for the Google Summer of Code competition. My numerical chances are not very good, but I try to be optimistic anyways. I just hope Google realizes that KDE has the largest public revision control system in the world and allocates openings accordingly.

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Good luck to ya with the SoC!
I am also anxiously awaiting an email from them

#1 Leo S on 2005-06-24 17:07 (Reply)

"Slashdot picked up the story I submitted about KDE, amaroK and Wikimedia."

And naturally, most of the comments below the story are:

1) "This is a stupid project. I already know who sings the songs I'm listening to, why would I need to look them up?"

2) "KDE is going to ruin Wikimedia somehow."

3) "Gnome/Beagle/Whatever is much better than this will ever be."

Good to see some things never change.

#2 Anonymous on 2005-06-24 23:57 (Reply)

Actually, apart from the usual bashing, there was a great deal of positive comments. I thought it turned out quite well.

#2.1 markey on 2005-06-25 06:06 (Reply)

That which they made you sign is not an "NDA." Well, at least it's not related to how they made you sign a contract on not working on similar projects. Two different things at least

As far as signing the "not working on similar projects" document - they can't make you sign that (i.e., if you didn't you'd still have the job), and it's unenforceable (for the most part). Not that it matters.

-Charles

#3 Anonymous on 2005-06-25 04:36 (Reply)

Well, it did say "Non-Disclosure Agreement" at the top. That was my clue that it was a NDA.

It wouldn't surprise me if it was unenforceable about what I did in my free time, and they put it in anyways. Like how Major League Baseball at the end of a broadcast of a game seems to say that the viewer is under some sort of pact of secrecy and otherwise has no fair use rights. Companies don't mind spreading a little FUD around.

But like I said, this /is/ Missouri.

#3.1 Ian Monroe on 2005-06-25 05:04 (Reply)

"KDE has the largest public revision control system in the world"

Humm, what do you mean ?
- largest in size ? (then what about sourceforge)
- largest in community ? (then what about the kernel)

I don't say it's wrong, I'm just a bit surprised.

Keep going with this magnificient software which is amaroK !

#4 vip on 2005-06-25 05:57 (Reply)

We're not counting sourceforge and other similar services because it isn't one repository or one project. With a KDE SVN account you can commit to any KDE project all one one hostname/server. So largest in size, yes. I didn't make this up, it was in a blog from one of the KDE SVN administrators during the migration IIRC. They challenged people to find a larger public revision control system and none came forward.

It might be largest community, I dunno. There's >1000 people with SVN commit access. The kernel doesn't have a public revision control system AFAIK.

#4.1 Ian Monroe on 2005-06-25 06:23 (Reply)

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