by JM Addison
Chapter 7
RipTide SoftWorks was in serious trouble again. They were working jointly with one of the big computer vendors to develop the technical specifications for the next generation of the popular ‘visual’ computer application creation tools. By collaborating over secure e-mail channels, teams within each company worked together to develop the next set of long awaited enhancements.
“Criminy! It’s like they knew what we were thinking or something! How could they have beat us at this?”, said Sivan Radshie. He was lamenting because another popular and successful computer software company had apparently been working independently on a remarkably similar project who was able to submit their specifications to the standards body first. If approved, the competitor would hold any entitlement to the expected windfall of copyright protected royalties.
RipTide was beaten. Again.
Jess Sanders replied with equal frustration, “It sure seems like an inside job. Did you see the pre-release of the spec? Their component object model handling is almost identical to what we had already written! Somebody on one of the teams must be a mole. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sivan responded halfheartedly, “Well, we can just flush our jobs down the toilet now. We really needed this. Especially after the last screw up. I thought we had taken every precaution so that this couldn’t happen to us again. Everyone on both teams was trusted. Hell, I can’t even think of a single person I would suspect of leaking information like this. We were all betting on it. Somebody must have gotten bribed with one heck of a lot of money to turn this stuff over to our competitors.”
“What about espionage?”
“You mean someone broke in and stole the material? Things are so tight around here that I sometimes have problems overcoming our own security just to access my own stuff! I just can’t see how someone could simply waltz in and take what they want.”
Jess lamented agreement, “Yeah, I agree. With digital certificates and authorization cards and encrypted files and such, I suppose someone would have a pretty tough time just stealing anything. I guess it would have to be an inside job.”
“Well we’ve got twenty some top-notch programmers here. I suppose we could take on another project. Maybe we can just land a contract someplace, mind our own business and at least have jobs.”
“Yeah, but you heard the boss talking about the risks they’ve taken to get this far. We’re just plain financially overextended. This place will soon belong to the banks. I don’t see any other way.”
Sivan laughed, “hey look at the bright side, we’re still young, we live in Silicon Valley and the type of work each of us does is a pretty hot commodity these days. Let them worry about how to go bankrupt. I say we abandon ship before the waters fill with hungry sharks!”
Jess replied, “I only want to know one thing. Somebody we know blew us apart by supplying our competitors with trade secrets. Who is it among us that we simply can’t trust?”