Software shouldn't rot. If you ignore the cancer of everything as a subscription service, algorithms don't need to be tweaked every 6 months. A tool for accounting or image editing or viewing text files or organizing notes can be written well once and doesn't need to change.
Most software that was ever written was done so by companies that no longer exist, or by people (not working for a software company) no longer associated with those company they wrote the tool for. In many of these cases the source is not available, so there is no way to recompile it or update it for a new platform, but the tool works as good as ever.
Most software that was ever written was done so by companies that no longer exist, or by people (not working for a software company) no longer associated with those company they wrote the tool for. In many of these cases the source is not available, so there is no way to recompile it or update it for a new platform, but the tool works as good as ever.
Binary backcompat is incredibly important.