Quote:
Since Rio have already successfully licensed their code to a number of (fairly major) companies I don't think their executives are likely to consider open source as an attractive option. Indeed, right or wrong, I believe they will see it as a way of handing their IP to anonymous Asian ODM's [...] while simultaneously cutting off their NRE and license revenue from larger customers (who will not be at all happy that something they paid for is now "free" to their competitors).


DNNA could use the open-source OEM model. This is what NetBeans, OpenOffice and Smoothwall does. You have a proprietary version with all the latest features and an open-source OEM version (under a different brand name) which is a bit older.

You pre-announce that you are working on an open-source version and let all your licensors know. You reassure them that the open-source version will be a cut-down version, based on code in (what will be) the two-year old product and that in the future they will be able to choose between the latest proprietary engine or the older open-source engine on a product by product basis. The vast majority will see the added value of the proprietary product as a differentiator and choose to continue along that path for their products.

Quote:
...anonymous Asian ODM's (who will *not* respect the open source license)...


This is always a risk, however if they don't account for a large market share you could choose to ignore them and if they do account for a large market share there is a good chance they won't be particularly anonymous.

The Free Software Foundation has had a lot of success in encouraging Asian manufacturers to comply with the GPL - partly because it doesn't actually cost much money to comply. Again, there is not much stopping Asian manufacturers from making clone RIO products and putting your binaries on them right now.
_________________________
Michael
Ex-owner of stolen empeg #030102741