Where are all the old MV versions now?

[S Yeo]

I've been using various versions of MV over the past 30+ years, and I've recently been curious: Where are all those old versions actually residing now?

I mean, I know several products get bought and/or merged by "new" companies, but what physically happens to them when they are discontinued?

For example, I learned MV on a Prime Information system. The PI product itself was (I believe) written in Fortran. Where is all that Fortran source code now? Sitting in a storage closet somewhere? In a Dumpster years ago? Who ended up with all that paperwork, development tools, tapes, etc etc?

And Prime isn't the only one to have good software that became abandonware/bankruptware. All those other Pick flavors all had a physical home at one point.

Anyone know what happened to any of the actual software when their companies went under?

[Will Johnson]

There are still many companies out there that are running old versions of multi-value software, on old platforms as well

What typically happens is the parent company will keep supporting that for some time, and then announce it's twilight.
Companies that don't move onto the new platform, will for a while, keep using independent contractors to support them.
Then at some point they will be in crisis mode, when the person(s) is gone and they have no support at all