The Mesilla Fire Department in New Mexico watched costs triple from $4,000 to $12,000. Chief Greg Whited compared ESO's treatment to an abusive relationship: "I'm not going to come back with sunglasses on, covering a black eye. You've taken advantage of my department."

Clean room reverse engineering isn't a loophole. It's the legal recognition that functional knowledge cannot be monopolized through copyright. The technique works because copyright protects expression, not ideas. It protects the specific arrangement of words in a novel, not the plot. It protects the specific sequence of notes in a song, not the chord progression. And it protects the specific implementation of code, not the behavior that code produces.

ESO Solutions, backed by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, now serves roughly 20,000 of America's 30,000 fire departments. Vista manages some $100 billion in assets, led by billionaire Robert F. Smith, who in 2021 settled what became one of the largest tax evasion cases in U.S. history for $139 million. With Vista's backing, ESO embarked on an acquisition spree: trauma data vendors, station equipment trackers, firefighter scheduling systems, incident management platf

This economic transformation does not require revolutionary seizure of private property. It occurs through construction of parallel systems that outcompete extractive systems through superior ownership structures. Residents choose cooperatives over corporations because cooperatives provide better service at lower cost while distributing benefits. Market competition drives transformation when cooperative alternatives exist at sufficient scale.