alt Hacker NewsAs an option between developers and customers, of course you can do this now, and it happens.
That's very different though to a law that requires source to be released.
The former is something you do because you believe it gives you the edge in a sale.
The latter is a regulatory framework that imposes problems on everyone unilaterally.
Only everyone who goes bankrupt, and their creditors.
Rather the opposite for their customers.
I’m sure there’s a few cases where this would excessively hurt a company’s prospects (perhaps where a company has an innovative software product with a thin hardware component), but in the majority of cases losing access to the software of a hardware product as an asset is a relatively small loss, and the benefit to consumers is pretty huge. I’d support the trade off.