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From: declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Rumor problems...
Keywords: rumors announcement nextstep
Message-ID: <1990Aug19.190303.23788@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 19 Aug 90 19:03:03 GMT
Sender: declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Organization: Olympic Technologies
Lines: 75

In an earlier article, Peter Deutsch (peterd@opus.cs.mcgill.ca) writes...
 
>I have to defend myself against the claim that I somehow
>skated close to the edge of my non-disclosure agreement
>with NeXT. Yes, I like NeXT machines and I follow this
>group regularly (some of my distractors would say
>religiously! :-) I have seen all the speculation re: the
>new machines and I have not answered because to discuss
>material I have received from NeXT to confirm such
>speculation would be such a violation. On the other hand,
>I _am_ free to pass on rumours, reports etc that are
>general knowledge or in the public domain, not originating
>from NeXT.

I'm curious as to what you would the legal implications of this action
would be.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that NeXT is going to
introduce a neon pink 1' diameter sphere with a 25 MHz 68040 later
this year.  Let's also say that you know about it.  If a third party
developer leaks this information and you read about it on CompuServe,
then post it to comp.sys.next, what happens?  Who's responsible?

You may just be passing on rumors, but people who have signed
non-disclosure agreements have to be quite careful; there are serious
legal and moral issues that must be dealt with.  Especially now that
you've said in a public forum that you're nondisclosed, any rumors you
pass on will be taken quite seriously.

>Yup. I have been non-disclosed on the new NeXT product line
>and thus was allowed to see their new colour machine when
>I was in California in June. It was running a beta version
>of their 2.0 release of NeXTstep and has a separate board
>to do colour (I can say this as I've read this elsewhere,
>I'm not giving out any big secrets). There 68040 upgrade
>(already announced) should be shipping as soon as chips
>come in quantity.

>Note I mentioned their colour machine, but then again so
>has Steve Jobs in a number of interviews. I also mention
>the 68040 upgrade, which _has_ been announced, with a
>projected ship date of September. the fact that there will
>be a 2.0 version of NeXTStep is also not a trade secret,
>as far as I know. Everything in the paragraph above
>(except the fact that I've physically seen the machine) was
>knowledge I had before I went down to California.

You made two slight errors here.  First, you said that NeXT had a
working version of a color machine back in June; we can now safely
assume that it will be out earlier than we have been led to believe by
NeXT.  Second, you mentioned a September ship date of NextStep v2.0
(*NOT* NeXTStep) - as far as I know, a month was never offically
mentioned by NeXT.  I have a feeling you just unwittingly confirmed a
lot of people's suspicions.

What I'm concerned about is what this kind of information release can
do to NeXT's hopes of suprise when they introduce a new product.
Imagine that Apple is going to introduce a new Macintosh in September
or October, but it was delayed due to various reasons.  Now, in case
you didn't know, there's a special group at Apple which is responsible
for analyzing other companies and predicting what they're going to do
- in this scenario, they take your post, show it to the right people,
and NeXT is effectively scooped, rather than the converse.

Or, even worse, people may stop buying NeXTs in anticipation of the
new machine.  Then what happens if it's late - if it ships in October
or November (or even December) instead of September?  NeXT is out
millions in lost revenue during those two months...

I can understand your enthusiasm, but I don't want to see NeXT's
position damaged - or their element of surprise lost.

-Declan

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Olympic Technologies / Registered NeXT Developers \ declan@portia.stanford.edu
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