Plus if you are a software company in administration, the IPR in your code
is likely to be your biggest asset. Most of the code would be snapped up at
a cut-down price (compared to development costs) by the competition looking
to increase market share, or new entrants into the market.
James England
Epic Group plc
At 10:01 14/07/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>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
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James England
Business Development Director - Education
Epic Group plc
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