On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Mike Singer wrote:

> Dale Botkin wrote:
> > Unfortunately *I* never got paid for it, but that's a
> > different story. I recommend against taking on jobs for a
> > percentage, by the way.
>
> What would you recommend?
> Maybe it would be better to program each device at a home
> for some fee? How one could protect his IP in small market
> conditions?

Certainly selling preprogrammed devices is one way.  Not perfect, but
good; if the guy's got the know-how to have PIC code protection busted,
he's probably able to build it himself anyway.  In my case, I did the
whole hardware design, user interface, software, all of it.  Our agreement
was quite clear, he just didn't (maybe wasn't able to, for whatever
reason) live up to it.  I know he got paid, but I never did.  It's a few
thousand dollars, but unfortunately he's far enough away that it would
cost me far more to get a judgment against him, and even then I'd probably
never actually collect anything.

I just got a little too trusting of someone I'd been having good luck with
for a year or so, his situation changed and my money became his money.
Yeah, I'm not happy about it, but there's not much I can do now so I move
on.  I will never again make the same mistake, though.

Dale
--
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.

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