tkc, molehill/mountain
as I've made clear I am in the molehill camp, largely for the reasons you stated. Some of the sentiment might be found in language, blue refers to a failure to "close" the deal. Even if a definitive agreement were finalized, I would not be inclined to use the words "close" the deal. That sounds like a sale.
This is more of an agreement to move to another level of NDAs in order to craft a product to sell to somebody else (or actually give the product away??) for a cut of of the delta on a portion of the transactions for which if all goes well things might begin to trickle in 2015.
I am unwilling to do binary filtering. There seems to be a notion that all things are the same, that past management was nothing but potty mouth, and thus new management must prove better. Fine. Fair enough. But telling me you are going to sell a billion dollars of software on Oct 5th is different than telling me you are going to use cyan shadowing on your next conference handouts. Some here seem to consider the two the saem, equally worthy of red-flag status.
The former is very material, it involves, money, it is critical and current. The latter, while material, has no revenue attached, and importantly, it has no time sensitive component (in a general sense). It doesn't mean squat if they ink a "definitive agreement" last March or next November. The two outcomes add up to a grand total (difference) of zero dollars and zero cents. Moreover, developmentally, the difference is similarly nil as far as I can see.
Getting the knickers in a bunch of something that measures zero difference from multiple perspectives is LOOKING for something to get them in a bunch over. In essence the argument is that Solms should caution himself obsessively against errors that mean nothing because some want to see them for more than they are.
Of the investors at the C-H thingy I bet a total of zero think there was any failed deadline, redfalg, failure to close etc etc. as investors they likely focus on what matters, and taking something that doesn't matter and saying it does matter because SKS was a fool seems silly. "Doesn't matter" is an overstatement, but much more accurate in a value sense than pretending that something "failed to close" in some sort of meaningful way.
Unless of course he is lying, if Solms is lying about continuing progress and the lack of a DA is a redfalg for that lie, then it does matter. I don't think he is lying on continued progress on the EMV thingy.
I'm somewhat familiar with "definitive agreements" trailing development work, although it varies how much folks are willing to run with initial LOIs and NDAs. No doubt at some point investment stops absent something firmer than an LOI and a first round generic NDA.
The above content is my opinion.
