Quote Originally Posted by champagnemojo
I have another curiosity for you guys. It would seem like a logical conclusion that any former programmer for Microsoft would essentially be dead to the linux community, since he's seen their code. On the other hand he did have legitimate access...and how do project leaders keep such people out? Is there a background-check kind of thing on large projects, or is it just a "take people for their word" kind of thing? Sorry for all of the questions...I teach at a business school and I find this topic fascinating.
I would say you are essentially correct dead in the water and floating belly up for Linux developement and having had the legitimate access would not matter there would be terms and conditions on what any programmer could do when he signed his contract of employment while still at MS and most likely a number of years after leaving there as well, aside from the fact just who would ever take that risk letting a former MS employee get involved so that they can be sued for the effort. I would say this whole question(s) is a good one for [email protected] (I think I have the address right) they know far more about this than I. I know the developers for Debian have to be sponsored by another developer and they have to met in person so the new developer can have his GPG key signed to be able to upload to the servers but that is about all I know on that probably a question for [email protected] .