In addition, it's par for the course that there would never be any formal "freeze-out". *Any* hint of something formal or documented and charges of collusion would have them all in court costing them all fortune.
I think my point would be that even if the companies all acted entirely independently they would have done the same things because of the business model they were presented with. None of them could afford the cost and they would all recognize both the danger of competition and the lawsuit problem so independently or in collusion they would want to prevent the new technology from coming to the market. The fact that there was some interest shown tells me that the engineering side liked it, but the management side scotched it for the reasons given above.
I also don't mean to accuse Gass of being "greedy", merely that he presented a typical beginners plan, one that demands too much, too quickly to be palatable to the industry. I've seen it happen the same way before with other good ideas. The problem is that the inventor wants to recover his R&D more quickly than the industry normally amortizes such things. A lot of things go into it, and we will never know the full truth, but Gass lost my sympathy (which he had up to that point) when he went the regulatory route.
-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"
Tim Douglass
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