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mrandishHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to …

… When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used and that we had clear, valid copyright to everything there. The project had been written over several years, merged with a project we'd acquired with a startup, some key people weren't around any more, the source control had transitioned across multiple platforms, etc. And even once we nailed all that down sufficiently, we didn't get an "all clear" from legal, we just got a formal legal opinion that any liability was probably under $1M. And then we had to convince an SVP to endorse that assumption of $1M potential liability and make a business case for approval to the CEO. …

Original discussionCalifornia bill would require patches or refunds when online games shut down484 source comments · at import
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GE
georgeecollinsHN

It seems like the fair solution to this problem is to open source server code if you are going to cease support for an online game. That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to. I also really support giving 60 day notice if an online game is going to shut down. Places I have worked have had policies like that for games they are sun setting and I think the best game publishers think a lot about how to do that operation. It's not simple, because if people think a game is going away their behavior changes. And nothing sucks like buying online content for a game right before it shuts down. No matter what you do people will tell you they didn't know the game was shutting down. And if you give away content that you previously sold that also sometimes angers the community. The problem is when companies know a game isn't working they tend to want to shut it…

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GB
gbear605HN

That’s exactly the benefit of a law - it’s a forcing measure to require businesses to invest in processes to understand open sourcing, and to go forward when otherwise no one would make a business case for approval.

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DU
dudulHN

Is your argument that companies would be forced to obey the laws if they are mandated to open source discontinued games? And it's a... bad thing?

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TH
thombatHN

The final phase of Symbian OS was becoming the open-source Symbian Foundation. This required the existing codebase, hundreds of thousands of files, to be categorised properly (mostly homegrown, some acquired, some licensed) and where necessary restructured so that each directory only had one kind. Painful, exacting, tedious archaeology which all-but-froze development for weeks. Like a long-deferred merge, the cost to pay for belatedly resolving a mess of licenses is daunting.

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FO
forestoHN

Of course, it would also create a demand for open-source game server libraries, which would surely appear after a while, and make the whole process much easier. So while I believe you about all those difficulties existing today, it's plausible that they would mostly fade away over time. I think temporary growing pains would be a worthwhile price for the significant long-term public benefit.

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GU
gueloHN

If the bill is properly worded open sourcing the code shouldn't imply that all 3rd party libraries also have to be open sourced.

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NI
NitionHN

Nah, you just open source it in a broken state without anything that had separate licensing, so nobody is happy and the law is followed.

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IG
IG_SemmelweissHN

> open source server code if you are going to cease support > Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used and that we had clear, valid copyright to everything there. I can tell you the other side of that equation. There's no poison pill -short of outright fraud- that will kill an acquisition of a software company, than open source code embedded deep in the product. I've been in both sides of the table of M&A activity, and in the due dilligence, smart acquirers will always look at the code and libraries in use. If there's anything that even has the hint of open source, that is heavily scrutinized: what is open source by default can't be owned by anyone and if it cannot be owned, it doesn't have IP value. Most deals that ran into this issue would stop dead in their tracks, and it would take a while to spin back up, that is if the deal went thru at all

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WA
watwutHN

> Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used Your company did not tracked libraries licenses in the first place?

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