
Ask HN: What do people do with the code from failed startups? - bobbywilson0
I see a good amount of failed startup stories come across HN and I always wonder what they do with the code after they have called it quits. I haven't really seen a case of someone open-sourcing their code and uploading on github or something. I know that this is easier said than done, there are probably some legal issues around it. Nonetheless, I am just curious in what people actually do. Do they destroy it? Archive it? Print it out and burn it?
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joshfraser
My company EventVue failed. We tried to sell the code, but didn't get any
serious offers. We'd raised 500k in funding so any money we gained from a sale
would have gone straight to repaying our investors. I would have loved to have
been able to do that just for the long-term goodwill, but financially I didn't
have any incentive to work on finding a buyer. The chances of us selling for
greater than 500k after the team left quickly approached zero. Good startup
founders are usually quickly picked up by other companies or launch into
another gig of their own. For me, it was a hard decision to pull the plug on
EventVue, but once I did, I wanted to move on as quickly as possible. Wrapping
up the last pieces of EventVue was painful enough.

The code still lives on my laptop and I reference pieces from time to time. I
would have open-sourced it, but it included a lot of expectations about how
the infrastructure was set up and would have taken a ton of time to generalize
or properly document. The demand obviously wasn't there or else we wouldn't
have gone out of business.

So there she lies. ~100,000 lines of code and 3 years of my life. May she RIP.

~~~
MrMike
I share similar battle scars. As painful as these situations are, the ability
to pick oneself up, dust oneself off, and get back into the game is, in my
humble opinion, a great skill (as long as you take the knowledge of what
worked, what didn't, etc. with you into the next endeavor).

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bdr
I got permission to open source the first startup I worked for:
<http://andrewbadr.com/log/8/flowgramcom-open-source-release/>

It would be a pleasant surprise if anyone got it running.

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mvanveen
Open sourcing is always a good option.

Etherpad (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherPad>) got sold to Google and the
code was subsequently open sourced. It's since launched a number of hosting
sites providing collaborative editing services. The source code lives on,
there's even a node.js port available with a much smaller footprint (see
Etherpad Lite (<https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite>).

Another good example is Mozilla. When Netscape crashed and burned Mozilla
somehow managed to come out of the ashes.

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speby
Kind of depends on what code you're talking about. Some "failed" startups may
have valuable code that can be sold or licensed out, even if it ends being
somewhat of a firesale. Others may tuck it away on a backup or project folder
and never revisit it or only pluck away some useful bits here or there. Others
may use it as a template for a completely different business just to "get an
app up and running" if what they had prior had some similar pieces.

Finally, some may decide to open source some or all of the code. As was
mentioned, it's hard for others to use it, though, since it is rarely the case
that a startup's codebase is going to be pretty and easy to get going and
using, versus some nicely structure, re-usable OSS library.

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MrMike
I typically tar it up and store it somewhere safe. On occasion, I'll work on a
new project that could use a piece of code I know I've got stored away. Other
times, it's something I stumble upon years later and laugh at myself for my
coding style & quality, which continues to improve. "Omg I can't believe I
tried to solve X that way... wow..."

I've seen a few people open source their code for failed projects. Hadn't
really thought about that, but it's something I'll keep in mind should I have
an interesting, failed project.

~~~
bobbywilson0
Yeah, I am not sure what the real value in open-sourcing the code would be
because you can imagine how hard it would be trying to dig through a project
that isn't designed like a library for re-use.

~~~
MrMike
As jahmed said, it could be used as a learning experience. In other cases, it
was a valiant (or not so) attempt at making something great, that didn't work
out for a variety of reasons. Depending on the scenario, it might be something
that I'd like someone else to pick up from and continue, to fulfill the "I
want to use this." itch, but I don't have the time/resources to execute
properly.

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brackin
If the startup isn't costing you a lot it may be best it leave it running.
It'll give you more credibility as if someone says "I Made X and failed" yet
there's just an expired domain at X you've basically scrubbed out the past and
your work.

There's other sides to this as you won't want an ugly broken site up connected
to your name. Case by case basis really.

There isn't a whole lot you could do with the code, i'd just say for most open
source it and leave it quietly running, if feasible.

~~~
MrMike
It's important to note that it's not just about the financial cost of keeping
a service running. For example, I had one service that I built over several
months. It got some attention, but ultimately fizzled out. It comfortably
lived on some EC2 instances I already had running, sharing resources for the
project I had shifted into. However, the support requests came in from the
handful of users, and while I wasn't able to make it a financial success, it
would've been more of a disservice to those folks to provide a partially
functioning, unreliable service rather than give them the chance to migrate
away to a competitor that could better serve their needs.

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ghostganz
A few of my old colleagues bought the code from our bankrupt employer and made
a second attempt at creating a business with it. They did better than the
original owners, but not much.

In all other cases I've come into contact with the code just dies. Open
sourcing would be nice, but that's obviously not a priority in a bankrupcy.

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Joakal
I've attempted to make my code as OO possible. This means I can actually reuse
it later on other projects. Authentication, ORM, etc.

Everyone should release configurations at least. You can easily release those
and those who say you can't either have really bad configuration or too lazy.

~~~
joevandyk
FWIW, you can have modular code without OO.

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stickfigure
One of the big advantages of deploying on Google App Engine is that it just
keeps running by itself, and usually for pretty cheap. Just let it run as a
living portfolio.

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no-go-mojo
Yeah, the Justin.TV guys did for $250k on Ebay.

~~~
SingAlong
Just to add more info: they sold Kiko on eBay. And here's Justin's blog post
<http://areallybadidea.com/selling-kiko>

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jfeldstein2
Make sure you learned from it while you were writing it. Then it never
completely goes away.

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p4wnc6
It is donated to starving orphans.

~~~
azal
OpenSource it or sell it on Flippa. I sold a previous failed startup code on
Craigslist once, it had a website and all. Usually if its just code ppl are
hesitant to buy it, put it up with a nice looking site and some pics of what
it does and etc, and you should be able to find a buyer. A Friend of mine sold
his online business he wasn't making any money in, on BizBen.

