Something doesn't make sense here. DC Metro's card is made[1] by Cubic Corp[2] which is not in bankruptcy. The general idea of avoiding vendor lock-in is a pr

Something doesn't make sense here. DC Metro's card is made[1] by Cubic Corp[2] which is not in bankruptcy. The general idea of avoiding vendor lock-in is a pretty big deal and the board member's comment in the linked article was right: "And so that we're not just funneling money to people who are real good at intellectual property, but aren't really selling us anything, except a tether to them" If they really were in bankruptcy it would probably be easy for the DC Metro to buy the technology for pennies and (hopefully) open-source it. 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmarTrip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmarTrip 2 http://www.google.com/finance?q=cub http://www.google.com/finance?q=cub