Comment by vannevar
4 years ago
"Worthless" is an exaggeration: any significant body of code running a critical business process would be missed---and expensive to recreate---if it were lost. But I think the article does make a good point about the value to others. Unless you have a dev team whose head is in that code, and a business team built around that software workflow, just having the code won't be of much value to you. The value of software is inextricably linked to the team that has shaped it. So while it isn't worthless, it is certainly of much lower value without that team.
You are certainly correct about the costs of losing access to the source code, e.g., if it were destroyed.
However, it seems the author was discussing a different meaning of "lost", as in loss of control of the source and having it revealed to the outside world. He made the best arguments I've seen that the bulk of it is worthless to anyone else, who would be better off rolling their own from scratch, and provided a good example.
Indeed, if I were working a problem and somehow ethically came into possession of a competitor's code or product (e.g., via a buyout), the only use I'd put it to would be to try to see if they had any unique insights that we could adapt, and maybe some stand-alone chunks to use. And, indeed, that was the fate of a codebase of which I was quite proud when a company I co-founded got bought.
Agreed, worthless might have been a bit exaggerated.
worthless-to-outsiders is more concise to me that conveys what the author was intending.
A better description would be "a liability". Every extra line of code is a line that has to be maintained in perpetuity. Each new engineer has to learn it all again.
The saleable product has value. A library you use for multiple products has some value. Everything else is cost.
Engineers are a liabity. You need them to write and fix code that runs your product, but other than that every extra engineer just demands salary and increases your costs.
Therefore I conclude that engineers have no value for a company, since when ignoring all the value they provide they just cost money.
It depends on size of the company. Cost is a relative instrument. Develop a big market product, highly demanding, or for a critical mission application is another story for "cost".