With respect to software objects, the most likely reasons for their life to end are: 1. Not sufficiently useful relative to involved costs for most application

With respect to software objects, the most likely reasons for their life to end are: 1. Not sufficiently useful relative to involved costs for most applications(data formats, configuration maintenance, etc.) 2. Disrupted by something that is "10x better" for the purpose(e.g. using a spreadsheet instead of a text editor for 2D, cell-oriented data) 3. Outside forces invading the ecosystem and obsoleting dependencies(new OS, hardware, etc.) So what the Lindy effect describes in long-lived software is just the software that is relatively cheap to keep around, is hard to greatly surpass and resists invasion - which describes a lot of "worse-is-better" software, where the UX kinda sucks, and it's actually a bit too unstructured for any particular application, but not enough of these things that anyone cares to address it in the relevant professional scenarios where it comes up: instead the user just girds themselves to fight it into submission because they can spend six hours fighting it and one week debugging it or two weeks making a Right Thing that is much less compatible.