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Comment by pdimitar | Hacker News Reader

You have very quickly glossed over on why would the tech people be unable to reboot the entire service, and immediately jumped to hand-waving as "stealing the IP". The company is bankrupt, it does not need the IP. And the customers still need their product that you promised to support. And if you have not promised, you should be forced to promise, otherwise what's the point? It's like selling air that can escape at any time. Nope. I'll steer away from those businesses like I always have, and like most sensible people do.

> Holding startup founders personally liable if their product or business fails before 7 years and their business can’t be open sourced would create a very bad business environment, to say the least.

Maybe. That's a conjecture; a hypothesis at best. At the same time it might introduce pressure to have the licensing craziness tamed and streamlined. It's way too complex and hinders innovation, as you half-alluded to.

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> The company is bankrupt, it does not need the IP

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how bankruptcy works if you don’t think the IP is important in bankruptcy.

> Maybe. That's a conjecture; a hypothesis at best.

It’s not conjecture, it’s simple fact.

If you introduce laws making founders personally liable if their product fails within 7 years, you create a hostile environment for startups. It’s very simple.

The legal aspect is not interesting to me. I am more interested in "What are you going to do with that IP?".

Citing legalese is not relevant here, we all know how the situation came to its current state, the real interesting question is how can things improve.

Right, this is why I’m trying to tell you that you don’t understand how bankruptcy works with tech companies. The IP is an asset which is sold off to recoup money which goes toward the company’s debtors.

If you introduce a law like this, you effectively remove that IP from the company’s assets. Tech companies are valued largely by their IP.

No sane investor or startup will headquarter themselves in a country that has a law forcing their IP into public domain.

Investors won’t invest in and banks won’t loan companies to develop tech IP if there’s a law on the books that says they can’t sell that IP.

> The legal aspect is not interesting to me.

I can see that much. :)

The legal aspect is all important. Waving it away is ignoring the entire issue.

> the real interesting question is how can things improve.

The proposals so far would do nothing other than discourage development of new products in that country. Hardly an improvement.

Unproductive discussion, I see. Seems like you are a protector of the status quo. To me it's blindingly obvious things are stuck and should be shaken a bit.

No founder is going to pay too much attention to what happens if they go bankrupt. They will be focused more on succeeding. Anyone that takes this into account probably deserves to go bankrupt

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