Doesn't cover 'hit by a bus' scenario. Worse, like escrow, there's no guarantee (or likelihood) that it will be in a state maintainable by the client (or by an

Doesn't cover 'hit by a bus' scenario. Worse, like escrow, there's no guarantee (or likelihood) that it will be in a state maintainable by the client (or by anyone). Here's my idea: clubsource, opensource within the exclusive club of customers. They all get source, and are allowed to modify and freely share source with each other - but only with each other. It's not open source. If they did want to share it (e.g. with a trade-partner or subsiduary etc), they need a new license from you. i.e open source, within a club. The benefit is that they have access to source, now; they can assess it; they can build expertise in maintaining it; they can customize it. And most important for you, they can band together in these endeavours, to either share the load, or for those clients most capable to maintain it (probably for consideration; consultants could also take on this role, by being licensed). The big benefit for you (apart from overcoming this objection), is it can keep improving and producing sales without you (though people will resent this, unless you make it sufficiently-cheap at that point). The downside for you is you can't screw them for updates or features or maintenance like an Oracle. And someone could easily copy it directly, or "reverse-engineer" it, and you couldn't really trace it.