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>When Facebook failed to stay online, there was someone who shared a lot of internal info before deleting their Reddit account. back in the day you would be ta

>When Facebook failed to stay online, there was someone who shared a lot of internal info before deleting their Reddit account. back in the day you would be tainted if you had read any of this material. today those lines have been blurred and even my employer, who was known to viciously keep tainted people out of the kernel, is nowhere near as strict

Zababa 5y ago
What do you mean by "tainted" and "the kernel"?
- morcheeba 5y ago
  That's a reference to clean room design - you don't want to be accused of stealing a competitor's design, so anyone with knowledge of that design is considered "tainted" and not allowed to work on your core systems ("kernel"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Tainted = aware of non-public information that must not be incorporated into the product, so it's easiest to just not let those people work on it at all. By only allowing people who don't know anything secret to work on a product, you keep the product safe from allegations (justified or not) of illegally incorporating third party material. If you don't do it, you risk that a competitor claims "your product contains our proprietary material, pay us royalties or we'll sue your customers". Even if you're 100% in the right, until you've had that decided in court, your customers have to worry about getting sued, and you'll lose business (and also spend a lot of money on lawyers). The model is particularly known/used in reverse engineering: One team (that is not tainted with knowing any NDA'd materials, I assume) looks at the product you're trying to reverse engineer, and writes a specification. Another team (not tainted by NDA'd knowledge or knowldege of the code of the original product) then implements the spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
  - anamexis 5y ago
    Wouldn't the liability only be with the company that allegedly stole the secrets? How would the customers be implicated?
    - grepfru_it 5y ago
      Many avenues lead directly to the customer. Linksys used gpl code illegally and when they were found out they had to release updates across all of their products, causing some of their lines to be end-of-lifed earlier than expected. Customers are definitely impacted by that. How about security secrets which directly impacts the customer?
      - Talanes 5y ago
        The question wasn't how could the customer be impacted. None of those scenarios have to do with the customer being held legally liable for the IP violations of a vendor whose product they use.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"back in the day you would be tainted if you had read any of this material" For most jobs, if you've worked in the industry for 20 years, you have seen 'secret sause' of several companies. They often look remarcably similar. Indeed thats kind of the value of an experienced hire?
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
How would a company reasonably enforce a rule against no tainted applicants? Ask Reddit for admin logs on the applicant's account(s)? Honor system?

Zababa 5y ago

What do you mean by "tainted" and "the kernel"?

morcheeba 5y ago
That's a reference to clean room design - you don't want to be accused of stealing a competitor's design, so anyone with knowledge of that design is considered "tainted" and not allowed to work on your core systems ("kernel"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Tainted = aware of non-public information that must not be incorporated into the product, so it's easiest to just not let those people work on it at all. By only allowing people who don't know anything secret to work on a product, you keep the product safe from allegations (justified or not) of illegally incorporating third party material. If you don't do it, you risk that a competitor claims "your product contains our proprietary material, pay us royalties or we'll sue your customers". Even if you're 100% in the right, until you've had that decided in court, your customers have to worry about getting sued, and you'll lose business (and also spend a lot of money on lawyers). The model is particularly known/used in reverse engineering: One team (that is not tainted with knowing any NDA'd materials, I assume) looks at the product you're trying to reverse engineer, and writes a specification. Another team (not tainted by NDA'd knowledge or knowldege of the code of the original product) then implements the spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
- anamexis 5y ago
  Wouldn't the liability only be with the company that allegedly stole the secrets? How would the customers be implicated?
  - grepfru_it 5y ago
    Many avenues lead directly to the customer. Linksys used gpl code illegally and when they were found out they had to release updates across all of their products, causing some of their lines to be end-of-lifed earlier than expected. Customers are definitely impacted by that. How about security secrets which directly impacts the customer?
    - Talanes 5y ago
      The question wasn't how could the customer be impacted. None of those scenarios have to do with the customer being held legally liable for the IP violations of a vendor whose product they use.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"back in the day you would be tainted if you had read any of this material" For most jobs, if you've worked in the industry for 20 years, you have seen 'secret sause' of several companies. They often look remarcably similar. Indeed thats kind of the value of an experienced hire?

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

How would a company reasonably enforce a rule against no tainted applicants? Ask Reddit for admin logs on the applicant's account(s)? Honor system?