5 ms·
This is irrelevant to my point, which is: If you have a 2,500-strong manufacturing plant, the government can come and take over your plant. If you have a 2,500
by maratc 6y ago
This is irrelevant to my point, which is:
If you have a 2,500-strong manufacturing plant, the government can come and take over your plant. If you have a 2,500-strong bank, the government can come and take over your bank. If you have a 2,500-strong property-holding company, the government can come and take over your company and your properties.
But if you have a 2,500-strong software development center, the government cannot come and take over your software development center. And this is why software development centers strive in Belarus.
- ramtatatam 6y agoI was very worried when I was reading about FSB entering NginX offices in Russia. I think your statement might be a bit too optimistic..
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoAnd they got nothing out of it.
- ramtatatam 6y agoTo be honest - I don't know. I was thinking - can FSB, as a result, inject some back-doors to NginX? I don't audit every line of code of software I use, and I don't know if situation like this would be easily spotted...
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoNginx is mostly open-source. If anything, NSA can inject backdoors as well.
- worik 6y agoI disagree. They take over your software company, and put you in jail. Sure they do not get your IP, but you loose it. I will hazard a guess that the software development centres striving in Belarus are very careful to stay entirely out of politics. Belarus is not a democracy.
- cbnotfromthere 6y agoThe comment you're replying to implies that the key persons of that company AND the legal entity are outside Belarus. Otherwise, as you clearly wrote, they would be at the mercy of whatever happens in / with Belarus.
- anovikov 6y agoExcept owners have foreign passports and never come to Belarus since many years. Only some middle managers are in, and key team is usually in the U.S. or in Cyprus, too.
- maratc 6y agoIf you had a manufacturing plant bringing $10M, the government takes over your plant, so now they get $10M. If you had a bank bringing $10M, the government takes over your bank, so now they get $10M. If you had a property-holding company bringing $10M, the government takes over your company and your properties, so now they get $10M. But if you had a software company bringing $10M, and the government takes over your software company and puts everyone in jail, they now get nothing. Moreover, where they had, say, $100k in taxes previously, they have $0 in taxes now. What you describe is possible, e.g. out of spite, but it does not make any financial sense. Everyone in Belarus is "very careful to stay entirely out of politics". Still banks and plants get appropriated. Software companies do not.