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This it the response that my colleague sent:
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We wish you the best of luck in your path. Of course we are disappointed, but have fun!
As per our phone call, and with respect to your request to keep the information you shared confidential: 1) you made no such request when meeting with us, if you had, we would not have been able to accept the meeting without signed approval from our legal department, so there is not an implied or real obligation, 2) We did not hear or see anything in your presentation that was not known to us before or is not public knowledge.
Please let me know if you agree with the above, thank you.
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Part of this mindset (on the part of the students) is driven by the original dot-com boom, and the current tech bubble. Everyone thinks they'll be the next millionaire. Sadly, society seems to rewards the swaggering ones more than the ones who actually contribute but not sure that hasn't always been largely the case.
This is part of a broader discussion we're having about commercialization and where academic research fits into society. I've spent the past few years looking at ways to transition some of our work and have come to the conclusion that we're probably better off just giving it away - assuming that we've got funding coming in to support the work (largely govt/DoD at this point). If we start limiting what/who/how we collaborate, we'll lose opportunities and in the end, less interesting work will get done. That said, living off essentially one customer (govt) is dangerous as well.
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