6 ms·

If you're shutting it down, why not offer the source code under an OSS license for your users to be able to migrate to self hosted?

by mhitza 5y ago

paxys 5y ago
Even if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > Even if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle. Would it? Don't owners of companies general cede day-to-day business decisions to those running the company (i.e. the CEO)?
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    The issue isn't who gets to make "day-to-day business decisions" (i'm not sure how you characterize licensing source code as open source as such, but it doens't matter). The issue is that shareholders literally own the property owned by the company, that's what it means to be a shareholder. Including intellectual property. Announcing you are shutting down a company, and then, without board approval, the CEO giving away what assets remain... is super sketchy and probably illegal, probably stealing from the shareholders (or even more likely other creditors, if they exist), who would probably like to partially recoup their losses from sales of any remaining assets. What those assets are you are giving away are, say, a fleet of cars, or the intellectual property of source code, legally the same. Imagine if a car service company announced it was shutting down, and then gave away all it's cars, instead of selling them in an orderly fashion and distributing profits to anyone who was owed money, including creditors and shareholders. Given that with a company going out of business a lot of people are going to be losing money and wanting to get what they can out of any assets... the time to release as open source is really before you go out of business.
    - namecheapTA 5y ago
      Maybe put the source code on eBay up for bids?
  - paxys 5y ago
    Well giving away all company IP for free isn't a "day-to-day business decision". If the company is shutting down the assets go to the investors, and they can choose what to do with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kodah 5y ago
Someone in the business likely is in-scope for licensing decisions and on the facade this sort of decision probably looks noble and altruistic. To answer your question, "is it possible" - yes. Ethically, however, it doesn't really check out for me. If the software is a core part of your business and the (or one of the) primary reasons an investor has joined your business then it's at the very least a bait and switch to make such a decision without their involvement. To a big VC or private equity firm this may infuriate some but have little monetary impact; at a much smaller firm this could be highly damaging. I'm also fairly certain that whatever harm comes from this decision would put the CEO in personal liability, potentially all the way up the decision chain.
Kiro 5y ago
I get the same question every time I shut down something. No, I don't want people to see my embarrassing spaghetti code. With that said, I haven't shut down any critical products so it has been more like "would be nice if you made it open source" but my point is that there are many non-obvious reasons not to open source something. Another is that I've randomly put credentials in the source code that I don't want leaked (again, my code is an ugly mess full of shortcuts and hacks). Yet another is that it would be impossible for someone to host themselves because I don't even understand it myself.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  As a freelancer/indie dev when someone asks me to share a codebase I wrote, I get worried. Freelance projects are bounded by NDA. And my personal projects are bounded by shame. If I am worrying about credentials, code cleanliness, documentation etc I wouldn't have any time or energy to turn my stream of free flowing ideas into code.
- interactivecode 5y ago
  Agree, I think the fear of someone finding a vulnerability and the original author being held accountable is high enough for almost nobody to open source their code.
- onelovetwo 5y ago
  That's a terrible way to think and oddly an excuse I hear a lot. If that's the case, there would be no OSS software, every OSS starts off crappy and full of bugs and usually not even close to finished. The goal of OSS is not to show off your skills as some elite programmer.
  - Kiro 5y ago
    Easy to say, harder to do. I get anxiety just thinking about it. What's the goal? You make it sound like I have an obligation to do it for some utilitarian reasons, while in reality maybe one or two previous customers would use it while migrating to something else. It's crap software with much better OSS alternatives already. It either dies with me or dies as an abandoned repo I need to be ashamed of.

If you're shutting it down, why not offer the source code under an OSS license for your users to be able to migrate to self hosted?

by mhitza 5y ago

If you're shutting it down, why not offer the source code under an OSS license for your users to be able to migrate to self hosted?

paxys 5y ago

Even if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle.

nicoburns 5y ago
> Even if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle. Would it? Don't owners of companies general cede day-to-day business decisions to those running the company (i.e. the CEO)?
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  The issue isn't who gets to make "day-to-day business decisions" (i'm not sure how you characterize licensing source code as open source as such, but it doens't matter). The issue is that shareholders literally own the property owned by the company, that's what it means to be a shareholder. Including intellectual property. Announcing you are shutting down a company, and then, without board approval, the CEO giving away what assets remain... is super sketchy and probably illegal, probably stealing from the shareholders (or even more likely other creditors, if they exist), who would probably like to partially recoup their losses from sales of any remaining assets. What those assets are you are giving away are, say, a fleet of cars, or the intellectual property of source code, legally the same. Imagine if a car service company announced it was shutting down, and then gave away all it's cars, instead of selling them in an orderly fashion and distributing profits to anyone who was owed money, including creditors and shareholders. Given that with a company going out of business a lot of people are going to be losing money and wanting to get what they can out of any assets... the time to release as open source is really before you go out of business.
  - namecheapTA 5y ago
    Maybe put the source code on eBay up for bids?
- paxys 5y ago
  Well giving away all company IP for free isn't a "day-to-day business decision". If the company is shutting down the assets go to the investors, and they can choose what to do with it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kodah 5y ago

Someone in the business likely is in-scope for licensing decisions and on the facade this sort of decision probably looks noble and altruistic. To answer your question, "is it possible" - yes. Ethically, however, it doesn't really check out for me. If the software is a core part of your business and the (or one of the) primary reasons an investor has joined your business then it's at the very least a bait and switch to make such a decision without their involvement. To a big VC or private equity firm this may infuriate some but have little monetary impact; at a much smaller firm this could be highly damaging. I'm also fairly certain that whatever harm comes from this decision would put the CEO in personal liability, potentially all the way up the decision chain.

Kiro 5y ago

I get the same question every time I shut down something. No, I don't want people to see my embarrassing spaghetti code. With that said, I haven't shut down any critical products so it has been more like "would be nice if you made it open source" but my point is that there are many non-obvious reasons not to open source something. Another is that I've randomly put credentials in the source code that I don't want leaked (again, my code is an ugly mess full of shortcuts and hacks). Yet another is that it would be impossible for someone to host themselves because I don't even understand it myself.

anyfactor 5y ago
As a freelancer/indie dev when someone asks me to share a codebase I wrote, I get worried. Freelance projects are bounded by NDA. And my personal projects are bounded by shame. If I am worrying about credentials, code cleanliness, documentation etc I wouldn't have any time or energy to turn my stream of free flowing ideas into code.
interactivecode 5y ago
Agree, I think the fear of someone finding a vulnerability and the original author being held accountable is high enough for almost nobody to open source their code.
onelovetwo 5y ago
That's a terrible way to think and oddly an excuse I hear a lot. If that's the case, there would be no OSS software, every OSS starts off crappy and full of bugs and usually not even close to finished. The goal of OSS is not to show off your skills as some elite programmer.
- Kiro 5y ago
  Easy to say, harder to do. I get anxiety just thinking about it. What's the goal? You make it sound like I have an obligation to do it for some utilitarian reasons, while in reality maybe one or two previous customers would use it while migrating to something else. It's crap software with much better OSS alternatives already. It either dies with me or dies as an abandoned repo I need to be ashamed of.