Quote:
Originally Posted by smothemh  I'm still sorting out how I think this might affect me, a very small user of the OSS edition (just for a dozen friends and family). One thing that would go a long way to help me feel confident is a personal commitment from the core Zimbra brain trust to be willing to take the Open Source version and fork it off if Yahoo! does bad stuff, like choke off hosting competitors, close the source, add nasty advertising, etc. I'm not sure what kind of restrictions were placed on key people as part of the acquisition, but that would really be something I would like to know. If Yahoo! ruins Zimbra, can you and will you get us back to what we wanted to start with?
Hope this makes sense. |
Won't do any good...
Those people now are Yahoo employees. They're probably going to be held accountable to (if they haven't signed them, they soon will) the standard Yahoo NDA/non-compete. All the intellectual property in their heads that make up "Zimbra knowledge" is going to be Yahoo's and they won't have the right to use it to participate in any hypothetical fork without Yahoo's permission. (This usually happens in any acquisition, otherwise, you won't have "bought" anything if everyone can just leave and keep doing what they were doing before you bought them).
Sure, in California, non-competes are fairly worthless, but the intellectual property clauses are going to be fairly air-tight, and all that Zimbra know-how is now property of Yahoo.