Microsoft's money is as green as any other money I'm likely to be offered for the software; my decision would depend on other things like the amount they were o

Microsoft's money is as green as any other money I'm likely to be offered for the software; my decision would depend on other things like the amount they were offering and the terms of the deal. For instance, "must move to Redmond," "must sign a non-compete contract," and "must be developed in Microsoft proprietary languages and for Microsoft proprietary platforms" would all be deal-killers. My goal here is not to be rich, necessarily, but to create the kind of company I want to work for and make it profitable enough that I don't need to work for any other company. If any buyer, even Microsoft, offered the sort of environment I wanted to work in, plus enough money that I could walk away and not need to work another corporate IT job again if the environment changed, I'd sell. And some of this is predicated on the experience of a good friend of mine, whose team mostly bootstrapped a very profitable company, then sold it to their largest corporate customer; suddenly they were getting guaranteed salaries, and they got to watch their project earn tens of millions in revenue, but the working environment was politically toxic and the company (now a wholly-owned subsidiary) was the football in constant turf wars, and (in retrospect, especially after seeing the first two years' income from the project) the price they asked was about 1/10 of what it should have been. I can't alter the turf wars and political toxicity in certain corporations, but I can make sure I ask a price for my company that means I can stand up and walk away with no financial worries if they develop.