I work for a large telecommunications company. One particular project that I have developed interfaces our company's ordering systems with the ordering systems of other companies in order to allow the provisioning of "meet-point" orders (customer orders while terminate at locations served by different companies). My implementation is one the first among the large telecommunications companies to allow Public Internet based transfer of these orders in a secure fashion. Additionally, my implementation provides for the combining of ordering information from the newer transfer methods and from the older modem based order transmission systems. Because of this, I've work with quite a few of the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) and small teams from many different companies know of the system I've developed.
Today I got a phone call from large IXC (IntereXchange Carrier) doing business as a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). Because they are operating as a CLEC, they also have to receive these meet-point orders from RBOCs. I assumed, at first, that they wanted information on how to receive from us in a more efficent manner (something I can't help them with as I only handle receiving not delivery). However, as the phone call progressed, the situation became clearer. This individual wanted me to sit on a conference call with his developers and give them the basic outline of how to build a system just like ours for themselves. They weren't offering me a job, they weren't offering to pay my company any money for this consultation, and they weren't using this information to do business with us. They just wanted me to provide this information to them for free, despite the many hours of development time we put into the project.
What? I mean, I'd love it if this was a free world where competition wasn't important and everyone looked out for eachother. But this is a capitalist society. Everyone is here to make money. Telecom companies are very competitive. Even the smallest advancement in technology can mean a huge lead in the market. Why would any company give away information that they paid good money to have researched or give away technology that they worked hard to produce when they receive absolutely no benefit for doing so? The Open Source, GPL, go free software guy inside me wants to be able to release something like this to the world. But, the truth of the matter is, most of the companies that would benefit from this software don't have the resources or the knowledge to improve it and would, in most cases, be slimey enough to keep those changes to themselves if they did. And, even if that weren't the case, they work for a large company just like I do. They know that, if I value my job, I can't just give them this information. Our legal department would have me fired very quickly for such an action.
This is just absurd.
