Deprecation Policy

Retiring a system on purpose, with a plan, an owner and a date, instead of hoping usage dies off. Chapter 15 of Software Engineering at Google covers it: deprecation is real work that needs staffing, and the cost of keeping old systems running is easy to underestimate.

Source: Software Engineering at Google, ch. 15 "Deprecation".

See also: Code As Liability, Hyrums Law, Planned Abandonment. From How do organizations throw (AI) stuff away?

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# Oct 23, 2026