However, if they have also had contracts with customers assigned to them I would have thought they would have to fulfil their side of the contract.

Is it the customer database?

Is it the IP / domain of the server?

Is it the website that promised it and hosted the contract?

Is it the ownership of the app code rights?

Because if you think more about it, there is some potential gap here in copyleft licenses which might need to be fixed to protect projects against companies abusing this methodology.

Should we tie liabilities to contracts therefore to customer data instead of apps and codes of apps? Is this a glitch in the democratic law that needs to be fixed by the legislatives?

In European law liabilities are tied to the legal entities, meaning that there is a transitioning phase of 5 years of the liquidation process until an entity can be sold off by the liquidator, and within that time frame customers must file their complaints/liabilities against the legal entity if e.g. they want their money back. That is unless a judicative / court decides otherwise and puts responsibility onto the owners if there is illegal ownership behavior (e.g. fraud) provable.

They probably wouldn't if they had known, so I guess the seller may left some information out.

* Non-profits

* Clubs

* Academic organizations

* Educational / semi-educational companies

* ...

The key thing to remember is that the whole of the universe isn't transactional.

And the right thing to do for "an [organization] in need of cash," if you'd like to see them continue, might be to... give them cash. It might also be the right thing if you'd like an organization to be able to bootstrap and not be under the pressure of investors. There are fine reasons to keep some organizations private and customer-funded (especially if the founder has a strong moral backbone).