specialized Linux hosting question

[bob 295]

I am a custom Linux software developer.    I have a problem client with repeat 
business and enormous growth potential.   One could fill a book on the 
"problem" part of this relationship but suffice to say,   this client is 
always willing to play the "withold payment until signoff" card ... yet is 
very reluctant to define what constitutes signoff ahead of time.   However 
this client has something important to offer:  a product which its customers 
want and some growth potential ... so I'm unwilling to write them off 
totally.

I've tried lots of different approaches with this client over the years.
T&M contracts don't work.   Fixed price contracts don't work.   Suggestions of 
outsourcing to a 3rd party foundation (as is done with Mozilla) are rejected.   
Suggestions of partially open sourcing the codebase also rejected.

The code in question is not open source.   It is owned by my client. 

The latest "solution" I've been toying with involves as scheme whereby I can 
neuter the "withold payment until signoff" card with a "withold source code 
until signoff card" of my own.    Fortunately the Linux application in 
question is developed using the SIMPL toolkit 
(http://www.icanprogram.com/simpl).    SIMPL comes with a set of TCP/IP 
network surrogates which allow for transparent SIMPL message passing to a 
remote SIMPL application.  This means that with suitable arranging signoff 
testing could be done on a partial set of remotely hosted SIMPL executables 
BEFORE the source code was delivered.   ie. some customer modules are 
remotely connected to this signoff area during the signoff testing exercise.

For legal reasons it would not be practical for my site to become the remotely 
hosted area.    As such I'm looking for a neutral 3rd party site (kind of a 
Sourceforge +) which could securely host custom (non open) Linux source code 
(CVS, SVN) (temporarily for duration of a contract),  allow restricted 
developer access for compiles, test script setup/configuration, SIMPL code 
execution and allow SIMPL surrogate access (port 8000) for customer signoff 
testing.

Does anyone know if such a service exists?

bob

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