I've got a very popular website in an industry where the giants are buying up the independent sites for a nice number of coins. I am making community improvements to my site, and to maintain consistency I am keeping the site Active Server Pages (ASP). I need to take steps to build a forum community, but I don't want to make a mistake that will hurt the site's ability to be resold based on the EULA of the forum. For example, WebWizForum has a terrific BBS, but the draconian legalese in their EULA is unacceptable - they can basically tell you to drop their forum at any time and they won't even let you ask questions about their EULA on their support forum. ASPPlayground.net has a terrific forum as well, and their EELA is friendly enough. My question is - how to 3rd party components affect a website's resaleability? I'm assuming like, since in the resale of a company the contracts that company has with other firms affect it's resaleability (and anyone that's dealt with a startup company knows that), the agreements that a domain has with others affects it's market value, as well. Can anyone comment on this? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or are the traffic numbers king? Corwin
In most cases, traffic means revenue, just as loyalty translates to longevity. And I hope that anyone buying a business is putting revenue first Ongoings.. Third party components are, unless owned outright or open sourced, an ongoing cost no more significant than a photocopier might be in a bricks and mortar business. Risks.. Licensing of software should always be clearly defined as part of business risk assessment (ie - can the business continue trading/operating if the licensor revokes or cancels a license). Each business has its merits. I suspect that the saleability of any online business needs to be assessed on a case by case basis, with the assessment being done by experienced, independent third parties. I hope that helps. I don't run around buying businesses on a daily basis, but I do have a little experience Cheers, JL