abandonware

plural abandonwares

1. countableuncountablecomputingA software product that is no longer updated or maintained, or whose copyright is no longer defended or which is no longer marketed even by the company who made it.

   RR> Never heard of Wildscan. Is it shareware or is there a^([sic]) evaluation RR> version available? It's abandonware ala Joe Martin inc.:)

   1996 October 12, John Hentsch, “Re: Converting file areas (one more time)”, in alt.bbs.wildcat (Usenet), retrieved 08 Feb 2017, message-ID <ff1_9610122110@mb.fidonet.org>

   2 more examples

   Abandonware is software that is no longer being sold or supported by its author, copyright owner, or licensed distributor. Software that is still being sold, but no longer supported, is sometimes also referred to as abandonware.

   2014, Aaron Schwabach, Internet and the Law: Technology, Society, and Compromises, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 1

   Such toolkits developed in research projects are deemed to end as abandonware where the authors stop working on it and reported bugs will not get fixed after the associated paper was accepted.

   2017, Paper accepted, toolkit abandoned., “Paper accepted, toolkit abandoned.”, in Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus, Denmark, archived from the original on 15 Oct 2025, page 1, column 2