There’s an interesting nuance to that though: I have built a lot of one-off tools for my clients that get the very occasional update, but basically continue to hum along maintenance-free. A month or two ago I finally was given a chance to shut down an Ubuntu 10.04 server because the client decided they no longer needed the tool that was running on it; the software outlived its usefulness. Could they have invested money into improving it? Maybe. Would it have been a good investment? Really hard to say.

There’s a big labour dispute going on in my city right now. 700-odd refinery workers are locked out (the employees announced a strike, the refinery locked them out to prevent unpredictable disruption), and the refinery is running on a skeleton crew of replacement workers. Because of blockades put up by the picketers, the refinery has chartered a fleet of helicopters for emergency transport. Additionally, the replacement workers are living in a camp on-site. Overall, the refinery was running at about 80% capacity, and even when factoring in the additional overhead from the camp and helicopters, their profit margins apparently went up due to the reduced labour costs of not having to pay the entire 700-person staff.

Then the demand for refined petroleum products dropped dramatically due to COVID. I haven’t heard much about what’s going on now profit-wise, but they have dropped production significantly. We’re now into month 5 of the lockout, and it’s the workers that are demanding to go back to work, not the refinery bending over backwards to try to get them back.

All in all, I guess what I’m getting at is... don’t assume you’re not replaceable just because you built the engine that makes money for your company. Any company worth its salt has an established Business Continuity Plan that addresses what to do in a whole number of disasters, and labour disruptions are in those plans.