[Terr_]

> when old servers are running that software and no one has the source code anymore

If only there was some kind of "open" source, so that it could be included along with the binaries. :P

I think the bigger problem is all the bootstrapping issues where you need "living" build systems to build more build systems etc.

[int_19h]

It would be nice if our compilers had the ability to directly incorporate the source code into the binary in some standard way. E.g. on Win32, it could be a resource, readily extractable with the usual resource viewer. On Unix, maybe just a string constant with a magic header, easy to extract via `strings`. And so on.

[biggestdecision]

I agree this would be positive. But the source only get's you halfway there though, you still need to actually be able to reproduce a compatible build system. And the longer ago the software was originally developed, the more challenging that becomes.

There are lot's of old projects out there relying on some ancient VS2003 installation. Same will happen with modern languages in a decade - code goes stale, and it get's more and more difficult to pull down the versions of software it was originally built with.

[Cthulhu_]

I hate (read: love) to be pedantic, but all scripting languages already have this feature built-in, and thanks to modern VMs and JIT compilers and the like, performance is much less of an issue.

It would be interesting to see e.g. a Go executable format that ships with the source, build tools and documentation that would compile to the current platform on demand. Should be doable in a Docker image at least.

[faissaloo]

No one's going to waste resources putting source code on the server dude, they'll host it somewhere else and then something will happen to it or they just won't see the need to give the source to anyone because they're the only people in the company who understand it anyway etc.