[kinkora]

"Facebook is not acquiring the company, technology, or customer data."

A genuine question: Since this is essentially a talent acquisition, why doesn't someone else continue running the product? or perhaps sell it off to another company?

[aculver]

That's always an option, like we saw with Airbrake being acquired from Thoughtbot by Exceptional. (http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/17212734809/airbrake-acqui...) However, this really only works if you can find someone you trust enough to uphold the same level of quality in the product, branding, and customer service, since any future failure will still reflect negatively on the original developers for some time. I think open sourcing the underlying technology is a great way to allow other folks to pick up where the company left off. (We also saw this recently with Copycopter, which was from the same company as Airbrake. http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/19388751626/copycopter-is-...)

[joshmlewis]

My guess would be, it would be hard to continue with the same vision as the original cofounders. I think this rings true even more in a startup because the focus and vision are constantly being refined versus an already established company. So that being said, it would be hard for a team to come in and just resume development on the technical side and product development side whilst keeping the same vision and focus as the original founders. It's definitely possible but it just seems like it would be a lot of hassle and time on the founders side to go through that process.

[chris123]

It's cool they decided to open source the code instead of sell it. That way everyone who wants to use it and/or study it or learn from it can do so. Seems like a nice way to give back to the community, grow the pie, etc. +1