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Do you offer
royalty-free options? |
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All of
TeamF1's component products are based on an upfront
development fee model and have no royalties associated with
them unless specifically negotiated as a part of the sale.
For our turnkey solutions, we offer several different
options including paid-up royalties, annual royalty buy-out,
and royalty-free options. We believe in offering our
customer maximum flexibility for using our products and will
work with you to find the right business model to license
our solutions. Please contact
sales@TeamF1.com if
you feel that a more customized licensing model works better
for you. |
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Do you provide
source code of your products? |
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Absolutely! Our products are available on an OEM
source-license basis. For customers who would prefer
object-code versions of our products as a way to get started
off, or reduce upfront costs, we also do provide object
distributions and step-up licensing options to move to a
source code license when desired. For the lowest license
cost option, we also offer our turnkey solutions under a
“binary firmware” license with no development rights. That
way you only pay for the using our software in the ways it
is useful to you. Please contact sales@TeamF1.com for more
details. Again, we believe strongly in working with our
customers to find the business model that works best for
them. |
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Why not use
the networking software that came out of the box with the OS
or was provided by the silicon vendor? |
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Some of
our products overlap with modules and components that
overlap with ones provided by the OS vendor as well. In such
cases, please note that there are usually many good reasons
to use our version of these modules. Our consulting account
managers can help you compare the features and benefits of
going with either option.
Some of them include:
TeamF1's
solution may present a lower cost per unit based on
royalties.
TeamF1's
product may be a higher-performance version of the native
version.
TeamF1's
offering may have features that you need which are not
present in the standard version.
A
commercial OS vendor's solution may not be part of the base
OS distribution and you may need to license the component
separately anyway, so why not look around and choose the
best one. After all, all of TeamF1's products are integrated
with the base operating systems they support as well as the
OS vendors' products.
Components
thrown in as a part of a "platform" for "free", frequently
are nothing more than loose bundles and do not match the
specialization and sophistication that is required for the
maintenance of advanced networking and security
technologies.
In many cases, when delivering a turnkey solution, we may
ourselves recommend the use of specific modules that come
bundled with the OS, depending on the end-product
requirements. We do not believe in re-inventing the wheel. |
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What operating
systems do you support for your products? |
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We support
a variety of industry standard embedded operating systems
such as embedded variants of Linux, various versions of
VxWorks, and other embedded operating systems such as
Thread-X, Nucleus, Green Hills INTEGRITY, QNX, eCos, and
others as a part of our turnkey solution offerings as well
as our standalone modules. |
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What is the
project execution strategy that you follow when developing a
turnkey solution? |
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Our normal
mode of operation for most projects involves taking a
project and breaking it down into pieces which can be
handled in-house by our team-members based on their specific
expertise and integrating it with the standard software
modules we license. We believe in adding value to a project
as a team and with our licensed intellectual property. We
work very closely with a client's engineering and product
marketing teams for various aspects of a project, including
but not limited to design reviews, integration work etc.
which may be carried out at a client's site upon request. |
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In which countries
do you have sales and other offices? |
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TeamF1 is
headquartered in Fremont, CA (U.S.A) in Silicon Valley where
our founding engineering team is located.
We also have a
premier R&D facility in the bustling software hub city of
Hyderabad, India. Further, we have sales offices and
channel partners worldwide to provide support and sales to
our customers. |
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What kind of support
do you provide for your products? |
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All of TeamF1's
products come with a 90 day comprehensive warranty. In
addition, our support and maintenance services are offered
on an annual basis and include help with installation,
API-level technical support, integration into your target
application, and any new versions released in that
time-frame. For our turnkey solution offerings, we also
offer the very popular “Annual Product Sustaining
Engineering Services” which bundles standard support and
maintenance with the engineering required to re-deliver the
turnkey solution for maintenance updates. For custom
services related to integrating our products with your
embedded application or for extending our solutions, you can
also take advantage of our professional services team on a
turnkey or T&M basis. |
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Do you provide
turnkey solutions on a "Fixed-cost" or "Time & Materials"
basis? |
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TeamF1's
projects are typically done on a turnkey (fixed-cost) basis
for all our products and solutions. However, in few cases,
when the scope of a project has not been nailed down at the
outset or the design specifications are subject to change
based on changing market requirements, we work together with
you to come up with other models that will be the most
flexible for your needs. Either way, we will help you budget
for your projects by giving you a good-faith estimate of the
effort involved. |
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Can you help with
the hardware design for our embedded systems development? |
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Though TeamF1 is
an embedded software development company, however, because
we work very closely with hardware, you may find us very
useful to have us on your team for board-bringup and initial
debugging of your hardware when we are engaged right from
the product realization phase of the project. Our experience
with embedded products makes us a valuable asset to your
team during the initial hardware features and cost
brainstorming of a project also. Technically, what we do
best is work under the hood of embedded operating systems at
the network and device driver level and thus we have the
right knowledge to help you in making your hardware
decisions better. |
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I thought I was
buying your software - what is this "license" I am paying
for? |
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Our software
intellectual property, like almost all commercial software,
is not sold (unless the assets of a company are being
purchased), but instead, the right to use the software is
"sold" to a customer, and indeed, multiple customers. This
right to use the software is the "license" that you are
purchasing and typically a set of terms that are laid out in
a license agreement govern the use of the license. For
example, license terms may limit the period of use of the
software, or the rights to modify it. TeamF1's license is
fairly simple – a development license allows the unlimited
use of and modification rights to the software by the
customer within the context of a specific project or
organization; a production license (included with every
development license) allows for integrated versions of the
modified or unmodified software in binary form may be
distributed through multiple levels of distribution based
with very few terms and conditions applicable to end-users
that are the industry norm. |
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Does any third-party
software that is included within TeamF1's products have to
be separately licensed? |
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No, TeamF1
ensures that it has the license to use and sub-license any
third-party components within the TeamF1 product. In rare
cases, some modules may require that patent rights or patent
licenses (separate from the software license) be obtained
from the party owning these rights. These components are
identified explicitly in the licensing agreement or are
packaged separately to avoid inadvertent use without noting
the terms. In no case is such software a mandatory component
and the software is always fully functional without these
components being used. |
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Does the TeamF1
software license include a warranty and support period? |
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TeamF1's
software always includes a warranty period as specified by
the license agreement. Support is available upon payment of
an annual support and maintenance subscription fee or
included with an annual product sustaining engineering
services engagement. During the warranty period (unless
covered by a support and maintenance arrangement) updates
related to defects that impair the operation of the software
(read: "critical bug-fixes") are made available at no
additional charge. If you purchased a support and
maintenance arrangement subscription, which we strongly
encourage, you are additionally entitled to full
tech-support benefits as well as patches, updates and
upgrades to the software during the subscription period -
whether these are related to defects or are enhancements to
the base product. |
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I already signed a
software license agreement with you for one product. I am
very happy with it and would like to license some of your
other products or want to purchase licenses for other
projects in my company. Do I need to sign a new license
agreement? |
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Typically (and
in some cases, this may be a function of your own company's
legal department) we try to simplify the process as much as
possible. If you already have a license agreement in place
with us, there is a good chance that we may be able to
license other products to you by just adding addendums to
the original agreement. |
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Do I need an export
license to ship your software products internationally? |
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OK, this really
isn't the same type of license as described in the above
sections, since export licensing of TeamF1's products is not
something TeamF1 determines - it is determined by the US
Department of Commerce (Bureau of Industry and Security).
The U.S. export control laws regulate the export and
reexport of technology originating in the United States.
However, since you are reading thus far, it is useful to
note that most TeamF1 products, including most cryptographic
ones, do not need an export license except for a very small
handful of countries (under License exception ENC). Your
end-product may still need to be separately classified but
if the only (or one of the few) cryptographic components is
a TeamF1 product, the export classification information we
provide (including ECCN number and License exception) will
be helpful in expediting your export classification which
will determine whether you need an export license or not.
Please contact our technical support team for details (only
if you are licensed TeamF1 customer) and we'll share the
goodies. |
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Does your license
agreement allow me to use some of your product documentation
in my end-product's documentation? |
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Yes, indeed, all
TeamF1 copyrighted documentation supplied with our products
can be used freely in your product documentation under the
license agreement. At times, we may also provide some third
party documentation if we feel it is useful to our
customers. These documents are released with their own
copyright notice and are not licensed by TeamF1, though more
likely than not, the terms are not any more restrictive, and
you may be able to use these documents too, as long as you
fulfill the copyright requirements (such as
acknowledgements, crediting the source etc). |
