BBC comments on the Theraons scandal. There is mention of NDAs and zealous guarding of proprietary technology. Unfortunately free software is not mentioned.
--- Elizabeth Holmes: Has the Theranos scandal changed Silicon Valley? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58469882 ... The problem in Silicon Valley is that the line between fraud and merely playing into the faking it culture is very thin. ... Secrecy is important for these companies to succeed - but that culture of secrecy can also be used as a smoke screen, particularly when even employees and investors don't understand or aren't given access to the technology itself. This is what happened at Theranos. Journalists, investors, politicians, you name it, were all told the science was there. Yet when questions were asked they were told the technology was so secret that it could not be fully explained, analysed or tested. ... There are many Silicon Valley companies I've reported on that will not fully explain how their tech actually works. They claim to have "proprietary" systems that cannot yet be revealed or peer-reviewed.
