Бағдарламалық кодты сақтау: Тәуекелді азайту және қолдауды қамтамасыз ету

Source code escrow is the deposit of the source code of software with a third party escrow agent. Escrow is typically requested by a party licensing software (the licensee), to ensure maintenance of the software instead of abandonment or orphaning. The software's source code is released to the licensee if the licensor files for bankruptcy or otherwise fails to maintain and update the software as promised in the software license agreement.

As the continued operation and maintenance of custom software is critical to many companies, they usually desire to make sure that it continues even if the licensor becomes unable to do so, such as because of bankruptcy. This is most easily achieved by obtaining a copy of the up to date source code. The licensor, however, will often be unwilling to agree to this, as the source code will generally represent one of their most closely guarded trade secrets. As a solution to this conflict of interest, source code escrow ensures that the licensee obtains access to the source code only when the maintenance of the software cannot otherwise be assured, as defined in contractually agreed upon conditions.

Museums, archives and other GLAM organizations have begun to act as independent escrow agents due to growing digital obsolescence. Notable examples are the Internet Archive in 2007, the Library of Congress in 2006, ICHEG, Computer History Museum, or the MOMA. There are also some cases where software communities act as escrow agent, for instance for Wing Commander video game series or Ultima 9 of the Ultima series.

The escrow agreements described above are most applicable to custom developed software which is not available to the general public. In some cases, source code for commercial off the shelf software may be deposited into escrow to be released as free and open source software under an open source license when the original developer ceases development and/or when certain fundraising conditions are met (the threshold pledge system). For instance, the Blender graphics suite was released in this way following the bankruptcy of Not a Number Technologies; the widely used Qt toolkit is covered by a source code escrow agreement secured by the "KDE Free Qt Foundation". There are many cases of end of life open sourcing which allow the community continued self support, see List of commercial video games with later released source code.