[trevelyan]

Give up. You're six years into a development project that requires programmers but you don't have any programmers. You seem to think that a company will hire you because you have experience - if your work is really that valuable why haven't they hired you already?

Get a job and continue to work on this in your spare time. Fund development and be smart about making what you build as generally-useful as possible (an enabling technology rather than a solution). If the market pans out for this other company, there will be opportunities for you... assuming you executed.