[tapostrophemo]

"Most of the application is in the minds of the developers. Take away his source and ask a developer to re-write an application and you are guaranteed to get a better program."

Well, not always. What about the edge cases the developer has long since forgotten? Unless you've also got a good test suite that covers those cases, you're exposing yourself to the risk of missing those edge cases in a sans-source re-write.

[jasongullickson]

You're absolutely correct. However I would argue that, if you are in a situation where the developer (developers, development team, etc.) is no longer is aware of these edge cases, you have bigger problems than a shipping delay due to a re-write.