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Comment by artembugara | Hacker News Reader

Quill owners could prevent that while selling. I'm pretty sure they were aware that Twitter will/could do that.

You can negotiate these things while selling.

Yes, but if you want to enforce something that the buyer doesn’t want to do, you’ll have to give up something else, typically money.

If it’s something the buyer really doesn’t want to do, it would be a lot of money and could kill the deal.

> You can negotiate these things while selling.

Can you do so in a legally-binding way? Surely if you are selling then they own the company, the staff, etc and can do whatever they want?

To do otherwise would mean that you still retain ownership and control of the company, thus not legally "selling".

A contract’s a contract and if they agree to something, it’s enforceable.

For example — it’s not uncommon when adopting a dog to sign a contract agreeing you will walk it N times a week, or never leave it unattended in public, etc.

Yeah but who would enforce a contract in such a case? The previous owners, working now at Twitter?

Yes

Does that actually work successfully though? My reason for my original post was that Whatsapp founders apparently used a clause to prevent Facebook from using its data maliciously, and we both know how it went down in the end.

There are a lot of sales that retain rules on property sold, like housing covenants.

You absolutely can! As long as the clause doesn't violate another law, you can 100% put in a clause that says "You will continue you provide the service for 365 days from the date of purchase." Typically the rest of that clause would specify the penalty for the purchasing company, which could range from monetary penalties up to cancellation of the sale, which would immediately revert all assets the company owns to the original owners.

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