[jspiral]

i have been involved in quite a few code escrow agreements but none that were actually used. i'd be curious to hear any stories about cases where that did happen.

in my experience it has just been a way to help business decision makers credibly claim they are managing risk when buying from a startup

[adastra22]

I imagine that it is for either insurance or regulatory reasons. Someone upstream is nervous about the bank relying on a startup for its core infrastructure, and is only placated by knowing that the code is in escrow. They're not themselves programmers and don't know how useless the code would be without the institutional knowledge of the startup.