@aj @mike805 @zbrown @worik @timbray

#SoftwareCosts don't end at deployment.

2001: An engineer adopts a French #OpenSource bulk mailer, running on mostly unsecured SMTP. Over the years it's extended ad hoc — eventually managing security group permissions. The company grows; the #software (now at 100× planned #capacity) falls over daily.

2009: After the original engineer leaves, a contractor-turned-hire inherits it. Memory leaks fixed, algorithms rewritten that had pre-cached the universe for "efficiency." Redundancy established and tested. Deployment documented. The upstream package has been rearchitected twice since 2001, and after being pulled off the project twice to restart, the replacement engineer maps all integrations to the new architecture with a proper API — replacing direct database queries. The max supported mailing groups turns out to be tied to filesystem limits: 32k+ groups (now at 300× original capacity thanks to fixing the memory leaks and hourly restarts) each with a directory, capped by hardlink counts on the inode. A campaign encourages responsible use and better security. Archiving aligns with retention policy. And nearly daily, a manager insists someone didn't get their email, so the engineer traces it by SMTP ID.

Then the company moves to Gmail, which won't tolerate internal mailers forging external domains. Data and management migrate to Google Groups with a new front-end preserving the old permission controls. Legacy API users are tracked and urged to migrate before "the end." And the heart of corporate communication for 15+ years is decommissioned.

Every stage has real costs:
• #Maintenance
• #Upgrade
• #CatastrophicFailure
• #DailyOperations
• #Decommissioning