As a general rule, your community is valuable, your tech is not. They can reproduce your tech in-house, the user base is harder. Why did their first attempt fa

As a general rule, your community is valuable, your tech is not. They can reproduce your tech in-house, the user base is harder. Why did their first attempt fail? Was the tech that bad or was it a marketing problem? If its the latter, I like your chances better. Either way, I think you should approach them directly. As you said, your current approach hasn't worked, so it may be time to mix it up.