> You can't force someone to open up their intellectual property. The company might have wound down but the IP still belongs to someone. You can't, but governm

> You can't force someone to open up their intellectual property. The company might have wound down but the IP still belongs to someone. You can't, but governments can. There are laws that protect IP; those laws could be modified to say that, if you decide to stop supporting a product that relies on your IP, then you must provide the means for individual users to support it themselves. That doesn't even have to mean giving up your IP; it could just mean designing from the beginning with the idea that a company won't last forever—but that'll never happen unless it's forced by law.