[daly]

The current average company lifespan is 21 years (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1259275/average-company-...). It has slowly decreased over time.

Given that Wolfram Research is tightly held, what happens when the company ends? Does it "punch a hole" in computational mathematics? Does all of your code stop working?

This isn't idle speculation. I used to use a Symbolics machine. Symbolics Inc. failed. The Symbolics software still exists but you can only buy a copy that runs on DOS. I used Common Lisp on Symbolics. Common Lisp is a standard. There are open source implementations so all of my code survived.

Will your code survive when Wolfram Research dies?

(Full Disclosure, I'm the lead developer on open source Axiom)