You’re staking your IP on the financial health of your company. If you have a promise to push OSS then you also provide motive for sabotage.

It sounds extremely paranoid, I know, but escrow is a much safer option because when you pass that on to the client it forces them to really commit as opposed to not caring if you go bust.

To put it another way: you get a commitment from them in terms of having to pay the fees for escrow, which is more than they would have to do if you made a public promise. That’s a longer term commitment, so you can wrap that into a longer term deal, which in turn can help you stay sustainable for longer.