
When software ecosystems die - sea6ear
https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/01/02/when-software-dies/
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BraveNewCurency
I don't think "go with the market leader" is a viable strategy, since I'm sure
we can all find examples of the market leader being upended..

So the real moral of the story is "Don't base your livelyhood on proprietary
software because companies WILL go out of business and leave you in the
lurch."

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dqv
>With Software-as-a-Service you're back in the realm of choosing between
monopoly pricing and chance of software disappearing.

For some kinds of data, this is okay. Modern SaaS providers seem to be
cognizant of the fact that we still want control of our data and so
accommodate that with an API.

The example given hits home for me. There is still one piece of business-
critical legacy software that I use that currently has no viable exit path. If
the developer ceased to exist, I would be screwed. I know they won't give the
rights to the source. I don't think I want to see it.

So I've been spending many hours over the past 1.5 years learning how to build
the backup parachute.

