Re:There will always be losers (Score 1)

You're right about that. The good sustainers are usually the last ones left in the building, if only because products are usually sold with an agreement to maintain support for X number of years. Even if the product is ultimately a failure in the marketplace, the few customers who bought and deployed it have a contract that says they'll get maintenance releases for X years.

Unfortunately the higher-ups see that sustaining effort as purely a cost, so it's now one of the first functions they attempt to outsource.