Hi - Some very interesting discussion ATM, so thanks all.
At 09:25 14/07/2005 +0100, VLE automatic digest system wrote:
>I have often wondered why software does not become open source when a
>company folds or falls off the market for some reason. Perhaps some does
>and I've never noticed!
This is a massive shame, and I've often thought about this too.
The basic answer must be that, when your company is folding, it's not high
up your priorities list to (a) find out who are the legal rights-holders to
all the code, including third-party code you may have bought in; (b) secure
permission from all of those rights-holders; (c) Make the codebase publicly
available in a way that can easily be accessed and understood by coders
outside your company (a lot of the knowledge about the system may be tied
up in your in-house coders' heads, or in your internal project
documentation)... etc etc.
And as for taking a product off the market, without the company folding -
you'd have to do all of the above, and at the same time waive your option
of re-introducing the product at a later date as a purely proprietary offering!
Dan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Stowell
Faculty Information Support Officer (Life Sciences), UCL
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/fiso/lifesciences/
Room B07A, Drayton House, 30 Gordon Street, London
Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 5472 (within UCL: dial 25472)
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