Because calling him that on a public forum is going help him reconsider?

i have given up on it and are just telling plain out how i feel about him. after 3-4 email which he have read with no response i jst had it.. how can a firm stat alive with that way of doing things?

This deal wouldn't generate much if any money for them against the costs involved in making it able to be released.

You need somebody to locate the code, clean it up, remove anything that can't be released, package it and then run it past the lawyers. That all costs $$$ and time.

Presumably the people who could do that more efficiently than anyone else are the Blue folks on here?

Not that it's ever likely to happen but is there a precedent for anything like this?

Maybe he's been made redundant and nobody deleted his mailbox?

If you're going to deal with big companies you'll have to get used to people not answering your emails if they aren't interested in what you're saying.

I think you're being rather naive here. Just saying you're willing to pay is awfully vague. Are you expecting him to accept Paypal?

I've pinged a contact who is (hopefully) still at Freescale about this. No promises but who knows....

Hugo

There's also the fact that a hastily-written email can get you into legal trouble, or at least trouble with your boss, absent an MoU or NDA, so it's often better to simply not bother.

I can't think of one. I suppose hardware abandonware isn't usually a problem because all the units eventually die... the Empeg seems to have been blessed with both unusually long-lived hardware, and unusually short-lived parent companies...

Peter

Heh. Two things:

1. Big companies can be insanely slow at responding to anything. I've been dealing with one particular large company for the past two years -- where they pay for my time to do things for them -- and any email to them takes between 2 and 4 *weeks* for them to respond. Even for the simplest of things. Now *that* is insanity.

2. As someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, you appear to have applied a self-centered approach to this: "release the code because I/we want it". Rather than, "here's how releasing the code will benefit youi". And if a case cannot be built for the latter, then there's simply no point.

Companies need to be presented with good reasons for them to *do* things, as they already begin with more reasons not to do them. If there are no or insufficient benefits to the company, then they simply won't be interested. I don't see where the current approach has even attempted to persuade them otherwise.

Cheers

I have a few questions about this situation for Hugo, Peter, or anyone else in blue who might have insight.

1. How much effort do you think/guess would be involved in redacting all of the IP the parent company could possibly care about?
2. What portions (other than the aforementioned MP3 decoder) are the most likely to require removal/cleanup?
3. Assuming the company simply goes dark and we never hear from them again, and sufficient time elapses that we all agree the code is abandoned and nobody will care what we do with it, do you guys still have a source tree lying around somewhere that we could work with? I promise that your answer to this question will not cause me to begin surveillance of your home/workplace.

That was answered earlier in this thread, with a resounding no (post #319668). Whether we believe that or not is irrelevant, as nobody is going to steal somebody elses property (the code) and brag about it here.

Cheers

This is an easy promise to keep, we already know you've started following them

If Freescale is anything like the place I used to work, even showing up with a decent list of benefits and a small suitcase with $50K won't get the ball moving very quickly nor very far. Once the sum reaches $100k then some eyes begin to open. At $250k+ you may get some workable steam and semi-firm commitments.

You also can't forget that most of the time, the people you'll be talking to are going to have to spend some brain power on any proposals. And it's not something they're going to get paid any additional sums to do. Some people have their official responsibilities and accounts and that's all they want to deal with. Money in the company's pocket isn't necessarily money in their pocket, so until such time as you can get the information to other people with perhaps more pull/power and make the financial reward significant, you may see no traction.

then they could just name a price.. i have even asked what amount of money that would interest them

but again.. i'm on the sideline from now on. One benefit is that i do less damage to the couse in that way

They'd have to spend time and money just coming up with a price, even if it was just the time and money working out what code you were asking for.

Well.. then there is still some hope, i still belive that it could benefit all of us to get the source

Maybe a webpage, one that hold all info eg. in one place? (just another crazy thought)

And no one here disagrees with you, we'd all like legal access to use the source.

I don't think my approach would result in the source being available to everyone - rather it'd be a small group of NDA'ed people. More than that is rather a lot to hope for from a commercial concern.

Hugo

Actually, anyone taken a look at the stuff freescale currently offer?

The i.MX515 is kinda tasty:

http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/IMX515FS.pdf?fpsp=1

1GHz Cortex A8, ATA-6, Ethernet, multiple high speed USB2.0 host controllers. Heck, they even have one variant of the ARM11 based one which is for automotive (still has ATA/Ethernet/USB2 but adds CAN fwiw... http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX356&nodeId=0162468rH31143ZrDR )

Now, wouldn't that make a nice new empeg main board, running empeg software... mmm....

Hugo

Tease

Better than nothing, and potentially a stepping stone to motivate open sourcing it in future...

At this stage I feel it would be worth putting in a lot of effort just to ensure the source is accessible to *someone* and to keep dreams alive...

well.... i just hope that they give us an reply some way or the other

was there any luck?

What do you think.