As far as I know from various legal issues I've had to deal with, the general issue with unbounded contracts is that 'forever' or 'lifetime' in legal terms actually has a legal definition different from the common definition. So a 'lifetime guarantee' could actually be held to mean 20 years. Different states handle this issue differently. Consult google or attorney friends for specifics.
Real trade secret issues like Coca-Cola's secret formula are very very unusual in the real world, and really shouldn't apply to most software if a company is claiming that their entire code base is a trade secret. I can understand how an incredible 5 line cooking recipe or encryption algorithm could possibly be a trade secret, but it's ludicrous to extend that 'trade secret' protection to an entire 300,000-line software code base. People who worked on trivial and basic parts of a codebase should definitely be able to talk about it after a reasonable amount of time. I believe that this is particularly true after a product is discontinued or a company goes out of business.
NDA's should recognize this and founders should put reasonable time limits in their contracts, even if their attorneys say that they should go for as much protection as possible and try to protect all code/data/etc for 100 years. When a software company discontinues a product, it would be great for them to just release the source code and share with the community. Our laws regarding trade secrets and copyright are outdated, and just because the law allows a company to do something doesn't mean that they should do it.
I totally respect John Carmack for being a great example of putting old code into the public domain. Carmack makes a point to release the source code of his old game engines (see doom3 code review: http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php ) once they're obsolete. I believe that this has a huge impact, and serves to help educate and inspire the next generation of game engine developers. An attorney or CFO could say that it's irresponsible to do that, but I'm sure that the benefits that he gets indirectly by doing this far outweigh any negative thing that has come out of it.
Real trade secret issues like Coca-Cola's secret formula are very very unusual in the real world, and really shouldn't apply to most software if a company is claiming that their entire code base is a trade secret. I can understand how an incredible 5 line cooking recipe or encryption algorithm could possibly be a trade secret, but it's ludicrous to extend that 'trade secret' protection to an entire 300,000-line software code base. People who worked on trivial and basic parts of a codebase should definitely be able to talk about it after a reasonable amount of time. I believe that this is particularly true after a product is discontinued or a company goes out of business.
NDA's should recognize this and founders should put reasonable time limits in their contracts, even if their attorneys say that they should go for as much protection as possible and try to protect all code/data/etc for 100 years. When a software company discontinues a product, it would be great for them to just release the source code and share with the community. Our laws regarding trade secrets and copyright are outdated, and just because the law allows a company to do something doesn't mean that they should do it.
I totally respect John Carmack for being a great example of putting old code into the public domain. Carmack makes a point to release the source code of his old game engines (see doom3 code review: http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php ) once they're obsolete. I believe that this has a huge impact, and serves to help educate and inspire the next generation of game engine developers. An attorney or CFO could say that it's irresponsible to do that, but I'm sure that the benefits that he gets indirectly by doing this far outweigh any negative thing that has come out of it.