[mcv]

Exactly. It seems to me that a company is exactly the wrong vehicle for this. Because a company will be drawn to profit and look for a way to make money of it, rather than developing and managing it according to this ideology. Companies are rarely ideological, and usually simply amoral profit-seekers.

But they probably allowed this to get derailed far too long ago to do anything about it now.

Sounds like their only options are:

a) Structure in a way Microsoft likes and give them the tech

b) Give Microsoft the tech in a different way

c) Disband the company, throw away the tech, and let Microsoft hire everybody who created the tech so they can recreate it.