Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Why? As a customer it is nice to know that if the company goes under you could maintain and use it going forward.


Yeah, OSS is fantastic for business precisely because you're not dependent on a vendor to solve a problem you're having.


Companies that go under don't take their products down with them though, that's a common misunderstanding. If there are paying customers, someone will buy the company's assets and support contracts.


That's far from guaranteed. + it might easily be a competitor that's now going to migrate everyone on their solution that "of course does everything $oldProduct did... on paper... on days with a full moon... if you pay us to develop it..."


But if it's licensed freely, anyone can step in similarly on an open source project, not just whoever bought the IP.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: