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Confidential NDA nonsense - does it stop anyone?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 5:13 am
by gwizz
I just tried looking again for the datasheet for the ESP8266 and this time I found it really easily!!

If you want an official datasheet you get to have to sign some piece of paper (NDA) ridiculousness with Expressif.

Or you could just google for it using a phrase such as "ESP8266_Specifications_English.pdf". It was hit number two for me :)

I could only find an outline document - 23 pages from Oct 12, 2013.

Can someone who has signed the NDA confirm that this is *the* datasheet? I was expecting much more detail :?

If there are more detailed documents available - perhaps we should have a guessing game for these filenames? (just for fun and novelty value only, naturally) :D

And in this world where I can just type a few characters into my computer and find this 'confidential' thing - what is the point of the NDA??

If I design a circuit and take it to market having used a datasheet I downloaded, I haven't broken any contract because I never signed any. So are there any consequences for me?

As Bunnie said - "Sometimes, you just have to stand up and assert your rights."

So what would be the consequences for me and my putative designs if I stood up and said - yeah sure I downloaded as much info as I could about this chip - ie this confidential datasheet - I was desperate to get it working - and the manufacturers were falling well short of normal standards in providing information!?

Re: Confidential NDA nonsense - does it stop anyone?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 5:42 am
by sej7278
if you plan on doing any opensource work, i'd advise you not to sign the nda or look at what they send you.

Re: Confidential NDA nonsense - does it stop anyone?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:54 am
by zdebel
Jesus christ, you for real? Those datasheets have been floating this forum since its inception.

Re: Confidential NDA nonsense - does it stop anyone?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:40 am
by gwizz
I am currently doing work that I am open-sourcing as I go along, absolutely, and I have zero intention of stopping, natch :D

And I may be a bit of an idiot for not finding them the first time I searched but, hey, my point here really is not to ask can they be found, but what (if any) is the blow-back on me, based in the UK, for reading such documents that I never signed for.

So I've already looked at the datasheet, such that it is, that can now be proven thanks to my own admission here :oops:

I feel this shouldn't compromise me or my open source developments.

I would welcome other contributions to help clarify this question, and the related one of whether that includes any documents I find?