[A_Beer_Clinked]

I've been through this a few times as both the vendor and the client. There are normally a bunch of conditions that can trigger a release of the the source code to the client. These _could_ include business failure but also non-performance or acquisition.

I've never come across one where escrow agent will release source to the Public Domain but I guess it could happen.

Companies like Iron Mountain have escrow services for clients of SaaS providers. I think in these cases data escrow is significantly more important than source code escrow.