Untitled topic

Sell your stuff, get currency, use your international connections. It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, but liberty is the most important. Who knows what will happen in prison and for how long they will detain you.

Also, depending on how technically competent your government is, you need to get all your services offshore now: Wuala for storage (like dropbox - based in Switzerland); Runbox for email (based in Norway); servers in somewhere like Europe or other nearby friendly countries that provide sufficient bandwidth... Burner phone, TOR, careful about your online presence, etc. In the meantime, move locally and rent a place cash under the table where address won't be registered. Basically, become invisible to your government.

Then you want to move your business domicile and bank accounts elsewhere if feasible so your local government can't confiscate your business once you do leave. Read into the 5-flag theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler

You're entrepreneurial, intellectually curious, freedom-loving - rotting away in prison would be a waste of great talent and not to mention a human rights violation. Starting a startup is hard enough as it is, it's important. But not as important as liberty. If you plan correctly, you can have both. Obviously, I (or likely none of us on here) cant fully empathize with your situation - best of luck!!

Edit: Are you in Singapore? I know Singapore is socially strict, but I thought it was secular. If you're in Malaysia, it's a different story. Moving your domicile and bank accounts to Singapore might make a lot of sense if you're in Malaysia.

What is your (honest) estimate of the code quality / time to familiarize?

What about those bugs, are they things that you could conceivably still do before you go to jail? Would it be acceptable if they were there as long as you were gone? (after all, they are there right now).

You're in Singapore?

How do you intend to deal with the financial side of this? (I take it there is a small business to be run as well to keep the lights on).

I can see a few options:

  - blindly trust some random stranger (probably a bad idea!)

  - give the company in trust to your lawyer while you are
    away to run on your behalf

  - get a friend up to speed in the time remaining and turn
    the site over to them before you go.
    

You'd have to expect that no matter what by the time you get out of jail (how long do you expect to go away for?) the business will have shrunk or will have died.

Good to see you at least have a decent lawyer, that may be an important part of the solution.

I don't mean to be insensitive but if you willingly break your country's rules then you have to accept the retribution that is dealt out. This is the cost of being outspoken, or revolutionary, or straight out insurgency. Being a HN regular and entrepreneur I'd hope that would be self evident.

Maybe the West has sold you on the idea that you can go against the grain and not pay for it, that's certainly what the western so-called revolutionaries seem to demonstrate. How long do you think Chomsky would last in Russia?

Some people in this thread suggest you move to San Francisco. It would have been ideal if you were born there instead. In SF you can go against the grain and pay nothing for it (and then advise the rest of the world to 'rebel'). What great heroes they are.

Where you are from it looks like if you upset the authorities you pay a hard price. I hope you feel strongly about your actions.

Today a US intelligence analyst was convicted of espionage by a US military court. He was pushing boundaries he knew to be illegal in his arena and now he's paying the price. His actions will be remembered for better or worse for decades to come, and he paid the price.

He didn't grow up in San Francisco, like you. I wish you the best and hope for a positive outcome.

And when I compare a couple of years in prison to my whole life the answer is clear for me. Escaping the country brings the bonus that he will never be able to see his own country again. As an expat who is away from home for the last 4 years I can easily say that it sucks. Being away from home doesn't make you free.