In a follow-up to my previous post, here’s an example of what can happen if your build your business on non-free data or software from a single supplier:
Nav4All navigation shut down by Navteq
Letter to 27,625,631 Nav4All navigation customers
Dear Customers,
It is with the deepest regret that we hereby notify you that the global navigation of Nav4All and the Tracking & Tracing will go offline in 3 days. The reason for the same is that the data licence agreement with Navteq (a 100% Nokia subsidiary) was not extended, in a totally unexpected manner. …
Nav4All worked on “hundreds of different mobile telephones of many makes such as Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Android, HTC, Nokia, LG, Iphone, Ipod etc.” Navteq is now owned by Nokia. It’s not hard to join the dots. I’m somewhat surprised Nav4All call this “totally unexpected”, though. It’s the obvious thing for Nokia to do. And they bought Navteq over two years ago. If I were a Nav4All shareholder, I’d be having strong words with the management right now…
I would think that if nav4all had any foresight at all, they would have included an perpetually extendable license clause in their contract with Navteq. While that obviously doesn’t cover the other party going bankrupt, it does cover getting bought out.