

Ask HN: What happens to a developer's stuff when he dies? - coryl

Hi guys, just a general question I was wondering about. Since most of us here have side projects, apps that make money, accounts with money/subscriptions/payments, money owed, etc.<p>What do you think would happen to all your stuff if you were to die tomorrow? Some of us aren't married, don't have families or wills. You may or may not have a technically inclined family who would think to check your paypal accounts, or would know what to do with your money making assets. They probably wouldn't know how to access/backup and move your domains and server files either.<p>Its probably not practical to modify your will every time you start a new project. Does this concern you? Have you told others about your accounts and what to do with your projects should you disappear? Thanks
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tyng
This is similar to the question "what would happen to your facebook account
when you die" for the general public, and a possible answer is, similarly -
there's no value for others to access them anyway, unless you are some kind of
celebrity or your side projects are making millions.

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coryl
Not necessarily, there are people with mobile and web apps who are making nice
sums of money, maybe hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. Some are
extremely low maintenance and don't need to be updated at all.

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tocomment
That's a great argument for releasing all of your work as open source. At
least that way it has a chance to survive.

People making more than a few thousand/year with their web applications have
probably thought of a continuity plan, but everything below that will most
likely be lost.

