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.
[6] 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,[7][8] the Library of Congress in 2006,[9][10] ICHEG,[11] Computer History Museum,[12][13] or the MOMA.
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).
[19] 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.