> Its an asset. Like many (virtually all, other than pure financial) assets, it has associated expenses; maintenance, depreciation, and similar expenses are the

> Its an asset. Like many (virtually all, other than pure financial) assets, it has associated expenses; maintenance, depreciation, and similar expenses are the norm for non-financial assets. To get technical about it, code whose discounted future maintenance costs exceed the discounted revenue it is expected to bring in or helps to bring in is a liability. Some maintenance costs are invisible, such as having team members leave; leading to recruiting expenses to seek a replacement and the associated ramp time when they're hired. Companies are often not equipped to assess the cost side in any way that approaches reality and just stick the cost of the "code" on the balance sheet as capex. Having an asset on the balance sheet after doing this doesn't mean you have an asset in reality. > The whole "code is a liability, not an asset" line is something from people who might understand code, but definitely don't understand assets and liabilities. Code can be a net liability. Unless you are looking purely at the asset side of the balance sheet and ignoring liabilities, which tends not to be very useful.