I worked for a company that built a really advanced TV DVR software stack, commissioned by a well know Linux distro company, could have been amazing. It was capable of handling combinations of TV playback and recording that would make any current solutions envious. But then said distro company decided they didn't want to get into the TV OS business, so they stopped the project when it was 75% complete.
Our company retained the right to use the source code. We pushed it, but some circumstances and some assholes stood in the way. The business started to struggle, we considered open sourcing it but the contract was complex and it would have been difficult to prepare the code to be open sourced. We didn't have the time and money to open source it and said distro company didn't want to pay us to do that.
Eventually the company was bought by some Russian company, the team laid off, the code was forgotten about and likely just illegitimately sits in a handful of ex-staff drives.
I feel it was a loss for the world that a huge effort never saw the light of day.
Our company retained the right to use the source code. We pushed it, but some circumstances and some assholes stood in the way. The business started to struggle, we considered open sourcing it but the contract was complex and it would have been difficult to prepare the code to be open sourced. We didn't have the time and money to open source it and said distro company didn't want to pay us to do that.
Eventually the company was bought by some Russian company, the team laid off, the code was forgotten about and likely just illegitimately sits in a handful of ex-staff drives.
I feel it was a loss for the world that a huge effort never saw the light of day.