>A lot can change in that period. It's hard to imagine Hughes providing a "smoking gun".
I see it the opposite way: any forensic examination of the business lines in an IT-only operation can benefit greatly from institutional memory such as Hughes can provide and few if any other cooperators could. The "why" of business processes are often quickly obscured/lost by successive operations and if the company is a candidate for breakup, old decisions often speak to demarcations where business lines can be reasonably separated. Of course, the company's counsel would never admit to any reasonable theory of separation, so old execs are kind of essential to the examination.
>Note: As I understand it, anti-trust litigation isn't based on stuff a company did long ago, it is based a company having and abusing a commanding position. What does someone who left long ago know about this?
They know the why and all of the how and the when, which allows anyone interested in breaking up the company to put their fingers on the hidden fault lines buried by successive layers of years of "new normal" at the company.
I see it the opposite way: any forensic examination of the business lines in an IT-only operation can benefit greatly from institutional memory such as Hughes can provide and few if any other cooperators could. The "why" of business processes are often quickly obscured/lost by successive operations and if the company is a candidate for breakup, old decisions often speak to demarcations where business lines can be reasonably separated. Of course, the company's counsel would never admit to any reasonable theory of separation, so old execs are kind of essential to the examination.
>Note: As I understand it, anti-trust litigation isn't based on stuff a company did long ago, it is based a company having and abusing a commanding position. What does someone who left long ago know about this?
They know the why and all of the how and the when, which allows anyone interested in breaking up the company to put their fingers on the hidden fault lines buried by successive layers of years of "new normal" at the company.