This is just basic business sense -- you don't go showing off your crown jewels to any company without lots and lots of NDAs and binding agreements in place fir

This is just basic business sense -- you don't go showing off your crown jewels to any company without lots and lots of NDAs and binding agreements in place first, unless you have some kind of hook in there to keep it rooted with you. And even then, just don't do it! This was the lesson learned by US chip manufacturers back in the 70s and 80s when competing against Japan -- it's no different with software. In fact, it's worse for software because there are less protections available.