Am Sonntag den, 17. M=E4rz 2002, um 09:58, schrieb Herb Peyerl:

>
> But the big problem is that, as a small company, we find ourselves
> in need of getting some investment money but it's difficult to find
> an investor who doesn't see "open source" as a risk to his investment.

This is a circular argument which I've heard so frequently...
The same investors will of course not pay for the initial development
work, unless of course there really exists 'angel investors'. Hence when=20=

one
says, 'hey with no money, free sources, I got my widget up an running to
prove that the concept works', these investors say, 'gee so anyone can
do this'... at this point the vulture is not interested and using this =
as
basically their out to any further conversation. This situations only=20
worsend
by the engineer putting up all their financial resources, as now they
have 'massive' liabilities... need I go on...

What remains a complete mystery to me is how did the dot.com funding
frenzy happen, give that almost no dot.com had a product that one could
in the last throw at the vulture capitalist... It would seem that the=20
VC's
are really better impressed with fast cars, women (or men...), and slick
spiels than actual factual hardware staring them in the face.

Except now they've been burned by the dot.coms, and are exercising
their 'due diligence' with a vengence...

Then there's another VC kill the conversation word... 'Apple'... but I=20=

digress...

I've come to the conviction that VC's are mostly stupid and lucky sheep.