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Comment by Tinyyy | Hacker News Reader

Why does FitBit have the responsibility of providing support for another company’s products? If they didn’t buy Pebble, it would’ve shuttered anyways and they might not even refund the preorders.

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When you buy a company, you don't buy just the assets. You also acquire the liabilities, which include debt, warranties and support contracts.

Which is why they did not buy the company. The company is going bankrupt and sold IP to recover money to pay some of the debts with. If you did that to a healthy company that might be fraudulent, but when the company is going under either way it is probably not.

Agreed, but I didn't see anything about court approval for this deal. If a neutral third party signed off on it being the best deal (for the creditors and customers) possible, then fine.

What if you instead of buying the company you buy the assets? Why would anyone buy a company with negative value?

Once the operations have failed the various creditors likely benefit from reasonably priced sales the assets.

Clearly that did not happen, because they stopped support for warranties. So only a moral, not factual, argument could work here.

Unless you buy the company in liquidation (chapter 7 style) which is more and more what this seems like.

Because they bought the assets? Why should they be able to only get the good stuff, and not the responsibility?

Would it have been better for Pebble to go bankrupt, shutdown their services now, and not refund anyone's orders?

Honestly, probably. Because then the precedent wouldn't be continued that companies can shirk responsibility for things they acquire.

Because that’s how the real world works? If you tagged on the responsibility, they would’ve just paid less for it. It’s Pebble and their investors that only sold the good stuff to maximise their returns.

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