The point is, hardware effort is low when compared to software. Few potential competitors, looking towards the large consumer electronics companies at least, are likely to open-source the software on what is, essentially, a consumer product - there aren't a lot of open-sourced video recorders for example.

What I'm trying to say is that our software (and the software/hardware package) is our key IP package for potential licencees. If we give away the software, licencees could just take the software, copy the hardware and with their superior manufacturing experience and expertise blow us totally out of the water: we are *not* primarily hardware manufacturers, and when it comes to shifting boxes we'd lose against a big player.

However, we *do* produce good software and reference designs, and it's in this area that we expect the future to lie - this isn't to say we're not continuing to develop the empeg unit, as this has more I/O, cpu power and twiddly bits on it than any OEM would be happy to put on a mass-market box (and it's a great showcase for the flashest stuff we come up with) :)

Open source just isn't really viable when there are any number of hugely-larger hardware manufacturers who could clone the design and remove any income from the prime developer: we'd starve. Selling support isn't an issue on a consumer product - unlike businesses, consumers don't feel the need to pay for support (especially non-mission critical support).

Hugo