There is only one problem with this plan that I know
about......and it has happend to many friends of my
family. If some commercial entity buys the
intellectual property rights to bochs then there is
nothing, absolutely nothing (even if it is a
requirement of the original contract of sale), that
insures that you will be able to retain any portion of
bochs and/or that the buyer will agree to let the
primary source code become GPL'd. You can even lose
the legal right to claim that you wrote the original
bochs source code!!! Please be very cautious in this
endevour, as those of us that make up the collective
FreemWare project would really not like to be sued
(especially as in this case there would be issues of
unlimited liability).
Something that you can do (Symantec has done this
numerous times), is sell the rights to a specific
version of the bochs source code--thus preserving your
rights for all other versions of the source code for
the bochs project. This allows you to both contribute
the version of the code that you own to whatever GPL'd
project that you wish, as well as to be able to recoup
some of your investment by picking up a commercial
backer. This is how dos defrag, windows defrag, and
the family of chkdsk and scandisk programs got
incorporated into MS Products such as dos and
windows--Symantec "sold" intellectual rights to these
specific versions of their own parent product line as
well as attached a small licensing fee for technical
support of the "sold" code.
I just thought that these things needed to be
said out in the open..........and I think that all
will agree that they are important issues.
Drew Northup, N1XIM
--- "Kevin P. Lawton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So here's the scoop,
>
> I have a ton of equity wrolled into bochs, which
> currently
> has a commercial license. At the same time, I'm
> also
> involved in FreeMWare which would benefit greatly by
> sharing code with bochs, but is completely open
> source.
>
> As I'll never financially recover what went into
> bochs,
> my mastermind plan is this. I want to focus on
> FreeMWare,
> because I believe it is one of the most promising
> open
> source projects going on. So I thought, if I can
> find
> a promising private company with good IPO potential,
> maybe
> they could buy bochs from me for some stock and put
> it in open source (LGPL, like FreeMWare). And I
> could
> work for them as an employee, programming FreeMWare.
> This way I could get in for less money up-front, but
> have it worth something later.
>
> I've been talking with various companies recently
> regarding
> doing just this. At this point though, I thought it
> would be best
> to just wholesale this idea out there in the public.
> If your
> company has an interest, let me know. I need to
> make a
> decision soon. I'll take the offer that is most
> appealing
> to the success and rapid development of FreeMWare,
> and to
> myself of course.
>
> Thanks,
> Kevin Lawton
> President
> Bochs Software Company
> 439 Marrett Rd.
> Lexington, MA 02421-7714
> USA phone: 781-674-1424
>
>
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