I'd do a Licensing Arangement.

While you retain ownership of the property under license, you also retain the responsibility for its quality and correctness. An unscrupulous licensor can drive you out of business by demanding an absurd level of support and litigating over it. The motivation in many cases to sell intellectual property to a larger entity is to acquire that entity's resources for continued devleopment, marketing, and support of the idea. That doesn't occur in a typical licensing arrangement.

Of course if you want the money now to pay off those after your house, it might not be a perfect solution.

All these scenarios depend on your financial posture and your tolerance of risk. I'm pointing out examples of cases in which valuable ideas are kept from usefulness. Of course that doesn't apply to the commercial treatment of all ideas, or even describe a general method of commerce. When I'm asked how prevalent this is, I can say it's prevalent enough for me to cite several real-world, first-hand experiences off the top of my head, but that doesn't intend to say that all idea-selling ends that way.

If you are a big company, there are several ways of exerting pressure on small companies that innovate a hole in your business model. Since a substantial percentage of those companies are hoping to be bought before their money runs out, buying them and throwing them in the Dumpster is one option, but certainly not the way it's always done, or the only way of doing them in (if that's what you really believe you need to do).

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Something called Fluidics was in vogue in the
sixties. It used compressed air and shaped
channels in plastic blocks that formed OR gates,
AND gates and flip-flops. It allowed control
systems where electricity was not desired. And
a few years ago a colour television projector
was demonstrated using the light from three
laser diodes mechanically scanned onto a screen.
Or a wall. Could have been mass produced very
easily I would have thought. Now we have the
flat screen LCD sets appearing in our shops.
They were developed for laptops and having
invested in producing them, the mass television
market is being invaded. But they are not
simple, it really is brute force having millions
of drivers for each pixel. But it can be done.
Still cannot quite believe it! But that simple
laser scanner is definitely not wanted now

Incidentally, liquid-crystal displays were first invented at the university in the town where I live. However, the inventors tried in vain to find an electronics company willing to invest in their idea, so eventually they turned abroad for more daring supporters. And now the Japanese *own* that industry...

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"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

I think that there is a difference between saying "That's how software works" and "it's prevalent in my experience". If your only example is Oracle, and that's where you worked, then your experience is probably strongly biased. Oracle is not really a good representative of the population, anyway.

Me, I'd like to believe that free competition tends to drive out such nuttiness--and that's been my experience--but I'm always looking for examples to the contrary.

I think that there is a difference between saying "That's how software works" and "it's prevalent in my experience".

Yes, you're right. It's more accurate in the context of my experience to say that's how software can work. That is, the combination of marketing and producing software can be set up to implement that business strategy. But it doesn't have to be.

If your only example is Oracle...

It isn't, but it's the most egregious example of a planned evasion of innovation.

Me, I'd like to believe that free competition tends to drive out such nuttiness

I'd like to believe it too, but that's not what I observe. And I'm obviously open to the likelihood that your experience differs from mine. I'm not claiming to be objective or encyclopedic, nor did I believe the original question required that.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Please tell me that this was intended as humor. I laughed out loud
for almost a minute, on the presumption that you were serious.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

No, since semi-static website isn't regularly visited by some of the finest minds in the world...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein

If you've ever been to a rock concert, you have been. They deal in these amperages all the time.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein

Maybe so but my house hasn't got a 1000 Amp fuse on it's power sockets.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Intended humor? Well, yes...although there is no law requiring that sellers raise their prices based on demand. They can do so, obviously. I just think it's funny that all the anger is directed only at the buyers. A good friend up there made almost $500,000 in equity...all the while cursing Californians for driving the prices up.

Yes, I do indeed think that's funny.

If you've ever been to a rock concert, you have been. They deal in these amperages all the time.

But not by pumping them into an auto sized object. That car is going to get very hot having that much energy pumped into it for 5 minutes. The cable size would be quite large, too. Of course, you can up the voltage in order to lower both the current required and the heat losses (as is done with high tension powerlines) but that presents other dangers.

And that isnt even including the AC to DC rectification losses converting the wall power to battery power.

At 1080 kW input power a 1% loss is still 10 kW of heat generated in the batteries or the power converters.

Vision can rocket you to the moon, or bankrupt you in a heartbeat. It all depends upon your education, experience, patience, but most importantly on your timeline.

Peter Drucker attempted forty years ago to get American businesses to look beyond next year's profit reports.

He failed.

So he went overseas, to Asia, which typically has a twenty year vision cycle. This is one of the reasons they lept on the idea of LCDs. It wasn't good to them when they bought into Sweden's idea, but it's certainly paid off over time, and is now used in virtually every electronic device known to man (except plasma TVs and hearing aids...).

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein