Dilema

[MJ Ray]

John Tapsell <tapselj0 at cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Have the VCs explicitly said that?
> They said that in business you need to find a way to protect your goods by 
> 'black box'ing it.  

You only need to do that if you are not the best at what you do.

> But after that it would be fine.  But then who knows where we'll be in 3 
> years...  

If your product is worthwhile, you will be obsolete by then.  Either a Free
Software replacement will be developed, forcing you into doing what you
should have done originally, or a larger competitor's closed product will
kill yours so you might as well open and do what you should have done
originally.  Either way, your loss of reputation is massive and possibly
catastrophic

Of course, that is assuming that you're not planning to use some other
dubious tactic such as process patents to prolong the agony.
-- 
MJR ,----------------------------------------------------
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