This page is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Talk to a qualified professional about your situation.
A software company’s most licensable records are its own engineering and operating history: repositories, issue trackers, design documents, incident reviews, support tickets and the chat that ties them together. Troveo lists code and data warehouses among the business data it takes; micro1 names engineering workflows. What a SaaS company usually cannot license is the customer data it hosts in its product: under California’s privacy law a service provider’s contract must prohibit using that personal information for anything other than the contracted business purpose (Cal. Civ. Code 1798.140(ag)(1)(B)), and B2B contracts normally go further.
Records and how they are usually treated
| Records | Usually | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Customer data stored in your product | Exclude | Held for customers; service provider limits and contracts |
| Production databases and logs with customer records | Exclude | Same; logs are often full of personal data |
| Your proprietary source code and commit history | Often possible | Check third-party and open-source licences and customer IP clauses |
| Issue trackers, design docs, incident reviews | Often possible | Your work product; scrub customer names where contracts require |
| Support tickets from your customers | Possible, after de-identification | Your support records, under your privacy policy and customer contracts |
| Engineering and company chat | Possible, after review | De-identification by the buyer; watch for pasted secrets and credentials |
Before you apply
- Separate the product’s data from the company’s data. Tenant databases, analytics and backups belong on the excluded side.
- Rotate secrets. Chat and repositories collect API keys and passwords; rotate them whatever the licence says.
- Review customer contracts for confidentiality clauses covering support tickets and anything that names the customer.
- Inventory third-party code in repositories you plan to include.
On our routing, Mercor appears for software companies as our own choice, because it connects GitHub and similar tools; its own industry list does not name software.
Which buyers take this industry
| Buyer and program | Industry rule | Company minimums | Operating or closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| micro1: Enterprise Data Partnership | No industry limit in the buyer’s published rules | 30+ full-time employees and substantial historical data; several years of records across systems is a stronger fit. No fixed minimum file count or size. | Both. Operating companies apply to the Enterprise Data Partnership; companies no longer operating apply to the Defunct Company Data Partnership. |
| micro1: Defunct Company Data Partnership | No industry limit in the buyer’s published rules | 30+ full-time employees and substantial historical data; several years of records across systems is a stronger fit. No fixed minimum file count or size. | Both. Operating companies apply to the Enterprise Data Partnership; companies no longer operating apply to the Defunct Company Data Partnership. |
| Nyne: Company data licensing | No industry limit in the buyer’s published rules | 20+ full-time US W-2 employees and 3+ years in business, plus a decision maker who can approve the licence | Operating companies only |
| Mode: Company data partnership | No industry limit in the buyer’s published rules | 10+ employees for legal; 15+ for accounting, medical and finance; 50+ for all other businesses. Several years of records you own make a stronger fit. | Not stated. Mode says businesses and nonprofits can qualify. |
| Mercor: Enterprise data | Our routing choice; not on the buyer’s own list | Not stated. Names target industries: legal, healthcare, finance and insurance, professional services, manufacturing, retail, real estate, logistics. | Not stated |
| Troveo: Business data licensing | No industry limit in the buyer’s published rules | Not stated | Not stated |
Questions people ask
Can we license our source code?
Your own proprietary code, usually yes, if no contract gives a customer rights in it. Third-party and open-source code inside your repositories comes with its own licences; buyers and your lawyer will want them identified or excluded.
We are winding down. What happens to the GitHub organization?
GitHub says a deleted organization's content cannot be restored. If the code and its history may be licensed or sold, archive it before anything is deleted.