Proprietary Software - Abandonment By Owners

Abandonment By Owners

Proprietary software which is no longer marketed by its owner and is used without permission by users is called abandonware and may include source code. Some abandonware have the source code released to the public domain either by its author or copyright holder and is therefore free software, and no longer proprietary software.

If the proprietor of a software package should cease to exist, or decide to cease or limit production or support for a proprietary software package, recipients and users of the package may have no recourse if problems are found with the software. Proprietors can fail to improve and support software because of business problems. When no other vendor can provide support for the software, the ending of support for older or existing versions of a software package may be done to force users to upgrade and pay for newer versions; or migrate to either competing systems with longer support life cycles or to FOSS-based systems.

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