Hello list!
A while ago I came across a very interessting high-temperature CMOS process on SOI for a client of mine.
https://www.ims.fraunhofer.de/en/Business_Units_and_Core_Competencies/High-T...
So, as I ask for manufacturing the manager told me, this process will be discontinued for economic reasons..
After some emails for and back offering help, publishing this process free and open, as Netscape did with their browser, I had a long call today with the higher management level. Well, he does not seems to be quite convinced to doing so. From his perspective, this would cost him money to support us, publishing all material they have in a god feasible way, mainly to pay his employees role.
I guess, somewhere was the hope, another fab would licensed the stuff.. And he asked quite directly, what we would pay to get the process. As I understood, the process fits exactly into their machine park and has some quirk in exotic material and fabrication steps. So it wouldn't be a one-by-one transfer into a the public.
My question is: Can we deal with that as Ransomware? Setting up a world-wide campaign of open-source enthusiasts to buy this process? I do not know about which amount of money he is thinking... I really know, if he put this process just into his safe, in a couple of years the process is dead for some reasons. All the developers are gone already, some old machines are already saled or scraped. He can not earn a batch of money with this process anymore, otherwise this would be still in usage, so he just likes to sale the leftovers.
Can or should we offer, let's say, one or two million? Or not? How much would it cost him to pay a couple of engineers to release the information to us and we'll do the rework and publishing?
Can we challenge this German Research institute in a way, it would give away the process "voluntarily"? E.g., can we argue with "public money - public code"?
What do you think?? All creative thinking welcome :-)
Regards, Hagen.