Hi again, Karl (the man from I.D.E.A. I see)

I agree with your lunch mate. This leads me to suggest yet again that your premise may not be correct.

I think it would be rare indeed for whole actual 'applications' to be handed out to anyone, friend or foe. But certainly confirmation of 'doability' or general thrust of how something is/was accomplished and most assuredly help diagnosing difficulties would be readily forthcoming. Code snippets or database designs would also be common I should think.
I have found this to be so for the 30+ years that I have been in the IT business. And I don't think, personally, that it has much at all to do with possible future "beneficial partnering" which, after all, is quite a new concept in the overall scheme of things. Unless the term is code for possible employment opportunities, in which case I would agree.

I am also quite sure that it happens in other lines of work too, on just as regular a basis.

I hope this helps,

Jim N


>Dear Alex and all:
>
>I was talking to a Foxpro devloper yesterday at lunch about information sharing not only among colleagues but among competitors and he had a surprising take on the issue. I wonder what other opinions on this might be?
>
>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.
>
>How do others feel about this?
>
>
>Thanks and my best regards.
>
>Karl Widmayer