abandonware

jargon

vendors & productsIT support

Software whose vendor is gone or has walked away: no patches, no support, no legal way to buy it - and often no way to run it safely.

Museums and emulation communities preserve the culture; enterprises meet the darker variant when a critical system's vendor evaporates and the unpatched binary becomes a permanent risk. Escrow clauses and open-source exits exist for exactly that ending.

All glossary entries