What We Measured About 'Abandoned' Software Before Monetizing It
Experiments on abandoned software reveal that AI does not reduce maintenance costs.
An independent experiment explored whether 'orphaned' digital assets, software with users but no maintainers, could become valuable due to AI reducing maintenance costs. Initial measurements disproved this hypothesis. For instance, 23% of 390 sampled Chrome extensions disappeared within 20 months, and user counts for unmaintained extensions dropped significantly. Additionally, many GitHub threads seeking maintainers preferred to offer projects for free rather than sell them.
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