[openbeos] Re: What are the chances of getting some corporate development support
- From: Michael Phipps <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 23:38:06 -0400
This is not stupid thinking.
When we get the final paperwork from the IRS, this sort of thing will become
part of my duties, as I find time. There are many companies that we would be an
interesting match with. Both in the "quasi-embedded" world (think Tivo, not
microwave) and in other markets.
I will caution everyone, though, that these sorts of things often take a lot of
time and a lot of money and a lot of progress. These people are generally not
going to be impressed with booting to a shell, for example, in spite of how
much effort we have put into it and what an impressive achievement that it is.
If we had a usable R1, right now, I still have my doubts about how impressed
many of these companies would be.
The one thing that is of value to us is our status as a charity. Why? Well,
it's like this - when a company decided to partner with Be, Inc., what
happened? Well, they gave Be a small pile of money. That money was, for them,
along the same lines as purchasing a service. That means that, to them, they
can write it off over some number of years. In our case, as I understand things
(IANAL - I am not a lawyer), they can write it all off in the same year that
they donate the money. And since licensing is not an issue, they can use our
product as much as they want without ever paying us a dime per device shipped.
That is why so many embedded devices are choosing Linux. Because of the low
(no) royalty rates. The advantage that we have, in this, is that our system
will be/is easier to build, easier to use AND has an even better license for
them.
So I think that corporate support would be wonderful. It isn't something that I
will pursue with great effort quite yet, but I think that the time is quickly
coming where it will be the best thing for us.
In the meantime, I am looking into grants and other charity funding. If anyone
out there knows something that I don't, please get with me offlist.
Michael
On 2004-07-03 at 17:35:17 [-0400], Eric MARTIN wrote:
> I was reading about M$ media O$ and was wondering if you guys were trying to
> get some help from big companies that could use this fine OS for for their
> new HDTV systems. Companies like Sony.Maybe some partnership. I read some
> articles about Asian companies trying to use LInux also.
>
> Is this stupid thinking ?
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