So, why these companies can't look for other avenues then just killing products? Alternatives: - Put it in maintenance mode and outsource it. A 5 person team

So, why these companies can't look for other avenues then just killing products? Alternatives: - Put it in maintenance mode and outsource it. A 5 person team offshore for this mode would cost ~$250K. - Open source it - Sell it to a startup - Sell it to an equity firm - Make a cloud service out of it - Add advertising/data collection to it that might benefit other products/AI efforts (with user agreement) I am of the firm believer that all code that gets written should be preserved. Someone out there sometime would be looking for it.