Perhaps the management of expectations at the start of the deal could have been done better. I can't tell at this distance.
However, if it is an consolation, this sort of company would not be able to pass the infringement audit which is generally required for a merger or acquisition, and if they went public they would be an uncomfortable enough target for bad news that would tank their stock that they would probably have to fix the issue before they went public. Cisco had terrible bad attitude. They rejected all attempts to help them. Including one from me personally, and I've never been treated so rudely. In the end they paid a lot more than they would have otherwise. Thanks Bruce On March 9, 2014 7:40:41 AM PDT, Joseph Heenan <[email protected]> wrote: >Hi Bruce, > >On 09/03/2014 02:48, Bruce Perens wrote: >> On 03/07/2014 11:49 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: >>> But, that said, the violators that give us the most trouble coming >into >>> compliance are usually wealthy corporations who expend more >resources on >>> skirting their responsibilities than on trying to comply. >> I don't get connected with these guys. All of my customers have >> decided to comply before they bring me on board. >> >> However, when we talk about the attitudes that /lead/ to >infringement, >> we should be clear that these attitudes in general do not exist in >the >> management or legal staff of the company. >> >> The folks with the bad attitudes are /inevitably/ engineers. >Whilst I certainly agree that there are a lot of engineers who do not >understand these issues and very much agree that universities fall >short >in this area, I'm not convinced the problem is restricted to engineers. > >On one project I've worked on, the company I worked for was >subcontracted to build a particular linux device. > >The engineers developed the product, and included in the deliverables >given to the customer was a tgz with all the source code necessary for >GPL compliance (which correctly excluded the proprietary application), >along with instructions on how to publish this to comply with the GPL, >what to put in the documentation, why this was necessary, etc. > >The management at the customer outright stated they would not be >publishing the source code. Their argument was essentially "we've paid >for this, we don't want our competitors to be able to get it". (It was >explained several different ways that this wasn't optional if they >wanted to use linux etc, but it made no difference.) > >Joseph -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
