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Comment by GabeIsko | Hacker News Reader

This wasn't just between projects - it was from one firm to another. So there is a conflict of interest; why would any gov. procure anything from anybody if a giant like Tata can swoop in and poach all your workers and steal your project? Personally, I think that any technical implementation details that does work for citizens should be public property and not commercial IP, but that's just me. It's not the world we live in.

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That’s why governments should do more in house and rely less on consultancies.

However in many cases of enter-rise software, everyone involved knows perfectly well that copying is happening. In which case there is nothing immoral ~ just a mismatch between elegant and actual reality.

Yeah, I agree 100%. The only corollary is that I view a lot of settlements like this as much more protectionist. I thought that this was for a gov. bid and not an insurance conglomerate, but the principle is the same. DXC lost the bid, probably because they were doing a bad job. So they held the whole effort hostage and sued based on IP protections. And then the Texas court awarded the American company 210 Million dollars from the Indian company.

In this case it is very straightforward legally if they copied documents over. You just can't do that, full stop. But I'm uncomfortable to say that this is an equitable relationship between all these companies, because it gives a level of protectionism to DXC to do a really poor job in delivery knowing that the American court system has their back if they lose on re-compete.

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