alt Hacker NewsWhat would be the problem with making it a stipulation of the acquisition as a consumer protection law, regardless of the corporate structure? Either it goes to a buyer willing to take on the liability and continue operating it or wind it down cleanly in exchange for the IP (and bidders can price that liability in), or it goes to a government agency or NGO capable of open sourcing or extending its life.
I don’t know enough about how courts split up intangible assets like IP to suggest how to bundle it with this proposed liability, but I think it can be pushed up to insurance carriers like warranties are. Make the insurers liable so that they push the requirements downstream and make them first in line for the relevant IP as creditors. Allow them to argue in front of the bankruptcy court to define what bundle they are entitled to as creditors and them allow them to fire sale that bundle as part of the rest. If they can’t get enough to cover their calculations, they can dump it on the agency/NGO for free. (IANAL and I dont know what I’m talking about)
Define "continue operating it".
Let's say I buy a text editor from a bankrupt company. I take that code and incorporate it into my main product. You can buy the text editor separately, it just costs 20k (same as my main product.) Is that "operating it?"
Alternatively this asset is encumbered by these rules so no-one wants it, it gets Open Sourced. Creditors lose out on potential revenue to recover their losses.
Now let's assume the code base is 'large'. Maybe it contains licensed 3rd party code (shipped as source) maybe not. Someone has to check. Who's owning that someone to do the check? If the check misses code, and proprietary Google code gets released. Who will Google sue? (Hint: everyone)
The suggestion is flawed because it fundamentally changes the way assets are handled in bankruptcy. Or declares code not to be an asset (which in turn has unwelcome side effects.)