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It would be better for startups in general if it was customary to open-source your solution if you shut down.

by aaronblohowiak 16y ago

warrenwilkinson 16y ago
I can see how it would be better for you. How would this be better for the startups?
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  Good for the startup community by reducing early-adopter fear of startups going under.
  - stoney 16y ago
    But possibly bad for the community in that it pretty much removes the possibility of getting bought by a company that wants your talent/customer base more than they want your product.
    - DennisP 16y ago
      If they don't want the product, why would they care whether it gets opensourced? Unless they're just removing a competitor, but if that's the case they could always violate the custom.
- dools 16y ago
  Yeah I agree with that previous comment (that I can't reply to for some reason). I was talking with a potential client this morning about how he used to us Drop.io and built some systems based on it in lieu of the API calls he needed then Facebook acquired them. It may be the case that the Facebook purchase in this case was about more than talent, but if every startup is only buying time until their big exit a general distrust amongst users may be the result.
bradgessler 16y ago
You can negotiate putting a vendor's code in escrow for the occasion that they shut down, disappear, or whatever.
Loic 16y ago
Or you do both GPL and hosting offer at the same time. This what we are doing for Indefero and this is working very well. In fact, we secured some big companies because of the ability to easily move in/out of the hosted offer from/to a company installation. The cost of entry on the market for a SaaS application is so low now, that companies start to ask more and more such kind of insurance. For some other services, code in escrow could also be a good idea, but when not open sourced from the start, closed source code is often hard to bring back to life as an open source project. Sometimes it works well, for example with Blender. Indefero is a code hosting/project management software: http://www.indefero.net http://www.indefero.net

It would be better for startups in general if it was customary to open-source your solution if you shut down.

warrenwilkinson 16y ago

I can see how it would be better for you. How would this be better for the startups?

aaronblohowiak 16y ago
Good for the startup community by reducing early-adopter fear of startups going under.
- stoney 16y ago
  But possibly bad for the community in that it pretty much removes the possibility of getting bought by a company that wants your talent/customer base more than they want your product.
  - DennisP 16y ago
    If they don't want the product, why would they care whether it gets opensourced? Unless they're just removing a competitor, but if that's the case they could always violate the custom.
dools 16y ago
Yeah I agree with that previous comment (that I can't reply to for some reason). I was talking with a potential client this morning about how he used to us Drop.io and built some systems based on it in lieu of the API calls he needed then Facebook acquired them. It may be the case that the Facebook purchase in this case was about more than talent, but if every startup is only buying time until their big exit a general distrust amongst users may be the result.

bradgessler 16y ago

You can negotiate putting a vendor's code in escrow for the occasion that they shut down, disappear, or whatever.

Loic 16y ago

Or you do both GPL and hosting offer at the same time. This what we are doing for Indefero and this is working very well. In fact, we secured some big companies because of the ability to easily move in/out of the hosted offer from/to a company installation. The cost of entry on the market for a SaaS application is so low now, that companies start to ask more and more such kind of insurance. For some other services, code in escrow could also be a good idea, but when not open sourced from the start, closed source code is often hard to bring back to life as an open source project. Sometimes it works well, for example with Blender. Indefero is a code hosting/project management software: http://www.indefero.net http://www.indefero.net