Open Source when Died
DISCLAIMER: This article objective is to spark ideas and conversations.
Note that everything written below is a thinking out loud from me, and yes, I am a naive and stupid software developer.
Your valuable perspectives and opinions to guide me to the correct light will be deeply appreciated.
Background
Have you ever experience a web service or software that is major part of your life suddenly went off radar due to business close down, your efficiency tools and all of your data disappear even though you have paid for the product especially with subscriptions for months?
Maybe a subscription service is a bad example, because they need to maintain their server hosting cost, which is a also a subscription model.
How about a smart device company that went bankrupt and now all of your smart devices are not accessible anymore via their app because they have taken their app down from Apple Store/Google Play Store and they don’t provide open API to connect to their products.
I think all these impacts can be reduced if the product source code is released as an open source when a company “died”, and hence I “propose” Open Source when Died(OSwD) initiative.
OSwD
What you see is what it meant.
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A claimed OSwD product is required to follow the stated rules:
- Release product source code when company went under(bankrupt, close down)
- Release product source code when it has become an abandonware
- Release documentation related to the said code base, including software design diagrams and manual
- Product device’s software application should design with open API, and its usage and API documentations should release to public when the company “died” (if applicable)
- Web product/services should release self hosting setup documentation
- The product/services that build on top of OSwD software are bounded by the OSwD listed rules
- (Maybe this one is too far fetched) Web services/products is required to compiled and send user’s created data back to them (applicable to server stored content, but not including user’s activity logs)
Benefits of OSwD
- Reduce number of abandonwares in the market
- Reduce the unnecessary effort to rebuild the same product/service again and let when community take over from what has been built
- Users are confidence and given long living guarantee of services from claimed OSwD products/services
- Allow new player to quickly sweep in and fill the gap in the market to continue or improve on the released open sourced product/service, provide better services and values to the community
How to Enforce Rules
How to make sure the company’s product claimed OSwD to comply with the said rule?
- Have a neutral software maintainer to audit their code repository configuration with pipelines to turn private repo to public repo when the company “died” (Eg: version control platform like GitHub and GitLab)
- Collect the company and person in charged name (PIC of company’s CEO/CTO/Lead developer) who claims that their software is OSwD.
When they are found out that they violated the rule, put them in a publicly shame list, make them accountable with their claims
Conclusion
These are the rough ideas I had, when it comes to tackle the issue of important subscription services become an abandonware, paid application stop working because the company’s server has taken offline, smart home devices become bricks because “dead” company did not provide open API and many more.
Comment your thoughts down below on how can I improve this “idea”, how stupid this initiative is or what else did I missed.
Thanks for reading.
In retrospect, I forgot that there are laws on IP protections and bankruptcy debtor payback priority from this reddit post.
But sure, let’s discuss in the comments too.
