What happens to data when a Web start-up dies?

news.cnet.com

18 points·jasonlbaptiste··7 comments

This is quite rich coming from CNet, which intentionally destroyed the largest cache of legal online music.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/15/hungover_cnet_wakes_...

"Pogoplug has put the source code for its servers in escrow. If the company goes bankrupt, the terms of the escrow dictate that the code be released to SourceForge as an open-source library."

This I like. It wouldn't fly for all companies, especially as you get larger (or get bought), but it's a really nice simple idea. I'd imagine it creates an awful lot of trust between the company and the users, which is always a good thing.

It's a very ethical stance. Terms like this could also act as a poison pill in the event of an acquisition where the buying company only wanted to kill off a rival technology - a kind of 'use it or lose it' provision.

The other thing that I see as problematic there is that it aligns your best paying customers with your failure.

This is one of those things that I've thought through a little bit. What seems like it might set up the right chain of motivations is to have the code in escrow where it can be licensed for a pre-negotiated fee and after n-years would become open source.

This doesn't exactly explain what happens to users actual data when a startup dies though. I know in the case of Pogoplug no user data is actually stored, but in many cases there will be huge databases of user data that need to be destroyed. A more appropriate title would be "What happens to code when a web start-up dies?"

Pogoplug's PR firm doing a good job of spinning an interesting startup angle into an article that got picked up by CNET.

It goes to web start-ups heaven.

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