Re: trade secrets

[Wayne Woodruff <wayne@xxxxxxxxx>]

> In the scientific and engineering community, when one has a
> real secret process or knowledge, one copyrights or patents
> said idea/process. Otherwise, everything is shared.

This is not the scientific or engineering community.

Companies have lots of trade secrets that are not copyrighted or
patented.  That's why they're called trade secrets.  If you copyright
it or patent it, it's out there for everyone to read.


> Imagine if Einstein had kept the photoelectric effect secret in 1905
> or Shotkey the Fermi charge interchange junction that lead
> to the transistor.

No argument here.

> I have published most of my work in technical journals, even
> when working for large companies and patented or been part
> of a company patent when money was to be made, publishing
> afterwards.

Likewise for myself.

> In the software field, had not Bell Labs published Unix in
> the 1980's, there would be no Linux, no Microsoft Windows,
> no Mac OSX. This is true for the C language, Perl, Python,
> the GUI interface (Xerox PARC).

No argument from me on this either.

> What I am saying is that if someone has the skill to perform
> a complex task, than their trade secrets are usually either
> something that cannot be patented or copyrighted due to
> their being common or prior art, or simply a sales pitch.

Who's talking about patenting or copyrighting?  We're talking about
fixing motorcycles.


> In this context I show people how to do things (its called
> teaching graduate school) in the knowledge that the tasks we
> perform are so complex that we are not in direct competition
> save perhaps for recognition.

You get paid to teach, Tom does not.


-- 
Wayne Woodruff http://www.2zars.com
Photoblog: http://2zars.blogspot.com