Notice of Shutdown

It was very generous of the founders to arrange to keep Docracy up for this long, even after the business was shelved. I enjoyed seeing the stats on the few docs I had shared on Docracy over the years. The business model was obviously not quite there, although there is perpetual interest in any kind of tech that reduces legal costs. It is a shame that firms are so jealous about sharing knowledge publicly.

I would love to see some of these projects simply go open source, or have an 'open for offers' time for other companies to bid on taking over operations. I'm sure many people (myself included) would be happy to keep services like this running, instead of simply turning the lights out and putting the code in the trash.

Is this something that Internet Archive or Public Resource would take over? Seems like it'd be best under a NFP.

This is a shame! I've been using Docracy for years as a good, free alternative to echosign. Hopefully something similar will spring up in its place.

Is there any similar service to Docracy or will they be leaving a noticeable void?

I find it really irritating when project like this decide to just shut down without any alternative. Why not give your users some options? After all, your users are the people who generated all of the free content for your site. It&#x27;s the least you can do.<p>For example, instead of shutting down, you could open source it, or at least allow people to download and host their own mirror.<p>If you aren&#x27;t willing to do that, then why not offer some kind of paid option or donation option?<p>I get it. Their dream was for the site to be free and ad supported. But if their hosting costs are that high, at least give people the option of pitching in! It would take 5 minutes to post a paypal link or a bitcoin link. But nope, they haven&#x27;t even done that.<p>Ugh. So irritating.

Bummer. I use their service and would have paid but they never asked. Good alternatives paid or otherwise?

damn shame.