>I asked him whether he would give programming help to someone who he knew to be in an enterprise that was a direct competitor. (I noticed
that on the UT site, there is a picture of the person and the company name.)

>After some thoughtful moments, he said, "It depends, but probably yes". His reason was that he would clearly not give away "the crown jewels" of any proprietary work he was doing, but he has seen situations in his company where help given to a competitor has opened doors to beneficial partnering later on.

The relationship between a developer and a client, in most cases, is built over time. Also in most cases, this generates trust. From my side, this means that if I put my best effort into it, my client is not likely to look for another developer, and if he does, I'll probably be told.

In most cases, a client would probably ask ME to look for outside help (which I already do and make sure he knows - this builds respect as he realizes I'm a secure enough person to let him into the fact that I don't have all the answers).

If you look at it from the one vs another perspective, most of us here are direct competitors against each other, but the likelyhood of a situation as uncomfortable as that arising is so small that we take the risk and open up to one another.

Now that I stated that this business isn't like retail (where you would snoop in nother people's stores and they would do the same), I think I would give advice as much as I would expect to receive it from anyone who reads my questions.

You will see that most people here do not disclose who their clients are. They tell what industry they're in (sometimes) or simply "my client", so there is that bit of closedness, but I think that's all.

If anything, many of the exchanges that take place here eventually evolve into partnerships which are mutually beneficial.

Alex