Every Startup Needs to Prepare for Its Downfall

> regulations are increasingly forcing businesses to write at least some parts of their last will and testament.

Human persons do this. What happens to our data? Our hardware that depends on the cloud.

Small software companies have source code escrow because large customers require it. Large companies not so much, even though vc backed startups are more at risk.

We tend to think companies outlive people but today it feels the opposite. Growing jobs for endineers.

This isn't a problem that companies will ever desire to fix. Rather consumers need to realize how misleading the marketing is, and learn to form their own judgment of expected outcomes.

Every business loves the idea of "the cloud" because it provides the opportunity to perform a post-facto bait and switch. Start off focusing purely on making something people want, then change whatever it takes to make it profitable. Servers shutting down for financial reasons is just another stop on this arc of renting services instead of actually selling products.

> Jibo didn't see that far ahead, but it did provide for a future at the 11th hour. As the company's last employees programmed the robot's goodbye speech, its founder reportedly signed a license that would allow developers to continue working on the robot's source code for educational purposes. Jibo itself was dying, but at least it might give life to a new kind of robot someday.

This should be the default. Copyright is a temporary monopoly. Can't ensure that your source code will be available once your copyright expires or your company dies ? - Don't get to benefit from copyright !