Comment by overfeed
2 hours ago
Thanks - I wasn't aware about the M&A carve-out, which makes sense. It reads to me like clause (c) is the most relevant:
(c) all of the ownership interest of any subsidiary, may agree with the buyer to refrain from carrying on a similar business within a specified geographic area in which the business so sold... has been carried on, so long as the buyer... carries on a like business therein.
and it prohibits competition "on a similar business". The Vite team would be blocked from competing against VoidZero, but Cloudfare isn't a similar business IMO, and they would be free to work on a private "Pronto" fork within Cloudflare (which is unlike the real-life Cloudflare/Vite scenario where they will continue public releases)
Maybe. It would require courts and nuance; cloudflare is in a lot of businesses nowadays. It rarely comes into effect regardless because people rarely spend less than a couple years at the acquirer, but regardless.