Abandonware | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the general concept of orphan works. Museums and various organizations dedicated to preserving this software continue to provide legal access. The term "abandonware" is broad, and encompasses many types of old software. Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in general it is like any item that is abandoned – it is ignored by the owner, and as such product support and possibly copyright enforcement are also "abandoned". Commercial software unsupported but still owned by a viable company The availability of the software depends on the company's attitude toward the software. In many cases, the company which owns the software rights may not be that which originated it, or may not recognize their ownership. Some companies, such as Borland, make some software available online, in a form of freeware. Others, such as Microsoft, do not make old versions available for free use and do not permit people to copy the software. Commercial software owned by a company no longer in business When no owning entity of a software exists, all activities (support, distribution, IP activities etc.) in relationship to this software have ceased. If the rights to a software are non-recoverable in legal limbo ("orphaned work"), the software's rights cannot be bought by another company, and there is no company to enforce the copyright. An example of this is Digital Research's original PL/I compiler for DOS: which was considered for many years as without an owner; Micro Focus, which acquired Novell, which had bought Digital Research's assets, owns this old PL/I compiler, but has a more up-to-date PL/I offering. Shareware whose author still makes it available Finding historical versions, however, can be difficult since most shareware archives remove past versions with the release of new versions.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (33)

Orphan work

An orphan work is a copyright-protected work for which rightsholders are positively indeterminate or uncontactable. Sometimes the names of the originators or rightsholders are known, yet it is impossible to contact them because additional details cannot be found. A work can become orphaned through rightsholders being unaware of their holding, or by their demise (e.g. deceased persons or defunct companies) and establishing inheritance has proved impracticable.

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is software that, according to the free and open-source software community, grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA-bound software—from making use of the software on their own, thereby restricting their freedoms.

Abandonware