Overseas facilities and licensing also were considered but rejected. Before it became a publicly traded company, Bytes founders had decided that its manufacturing facilities would be domestic. Top management strongly felt that this strategy had served Byte well; moreover, Byte's majority stockholders (initial owners of thetheh privately held Byte) were not likely to endorse such a move. Beyond that, however, top Management was reluctant to foreign license-or make auditable by any means the technologies for Others to produce Byte products- as they could not then properly control patents. Top management feared that foreign licensing would essentially giveaway costly proprietary information regarding the company's highly efficient means of product development. There also was the potential for initial low product quality- whether produced domestically or otherwise- especially for such a short-run operation. Any reduction in quality, however brief, would threaten Byte's share of this sensitive market.