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Is software ever done?
(opensourcesecurity.io)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Programming
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What does "done" mean? If software does what it should do, has implemented all goals in development and does not need maintenance, then it is done. However, the more complex software is, the more likely security fixes and compatibility fixes need to be done.
Why is the game "done"? It does not work on modern systems anymore, does it? I don't get what "done" means for this game.
How is it "done"? They released the game and it still has bugs and does not run on modern machines directly. The fans added lot of features through modding that the game could use to have. It's just abandoned and not updated.
I don't get what "done" means here. The given examples are a bit weird. Sure games are easier to be declared as done, than "regular" computer software on PC in example. Games for old consoles off course have not the same security issues as on modern PCs in example. These examples are more like "abandoned", as their platforms are.
Yeah me too! I think they didn’t go far enough here, because, as you note, there’s still a huge community around speedrunning and playing Super Mario Brothers. There’s a sense in which the thread of a piece of software is not ended until the last user shuts it down for the last time, but there’s no way to know when that is.
Also if software is Open Source plays a lot here. Anything that is Open Source is never done software. And then what if the community decompiles into source code? Super Mario 64 was done game I suppose, then fans decompiled and wrote the source code for the game and keep working to improve or add functionality. Now its undone?
The term "done" is so vague, it makes no sense to talk about it without declaring what it is. It's like using a variable in a duck typed language and just change its meaning randomly when its needed... (yeah Python byte me on this in the past... sorry I still have the wound).