well, it's about to get a hell of a lot worse. i flew 20,000 miles round the world, was invited here to speak with their engineers, help them out, set up a FusionForge for them, make it possible for them to present the R-Series processors to open hardware and software libre people across the world, even present the idea of using RISC-V and Nyuzi 3D for a future processor...
... and i learn the day after that from being on their premises for only five hours i've been accused of being here to commit industrial espionage, to steal their proprietary source code.
:)
Calmer heads can prevail.
1. I had hoped you went in there with a seasoned translator and wise man to defend you.
2. Remember pro microshaft engineers and executives are there as well who could have made those silly finger pointing and escalated it. It is in their nature.
3. In my experience of working in CN, you have a little cash, so you can afford to be generous and get them to make some modules and kick start business relations. No one would be interested in money talk or Linux talk or anything else with specific headings. What they want is business and lots of it if they rolled out the red carpet for you. So put your business hat on, and focus around what makes orders happen. Talk about BOM, timescales, what software you will get, and rights because you represent the open source world, drivers, documentation, interim boards, modules (may be pay for several modules to be built - DRAM, CPU, power supply etc for debugging work). etc. etc. etc. If you can place a new thoughtful order on every new meeting, you will certainly be their hero.