Microspeak: Escrow (devblogs.microsoft.com)

This would be an interesting pattern for a coding agent or orchestrator.

Isn't this just "release candidate" by another name?

Escrow used to be something we would see in large Enterprise software contracts. We would need to place the "gold" build of the software and associated source code on CD (or tape, depending on the year) and ship it to a third-party escrow service. Should our company go out of business, now former-customers could access the source through the escrow.

It's kind of crazy to think about the process actually working though. The likelihood of a customer being able to recreate the build environment properly and produce a working release of our quite complex software seems low. It would probably be cheaper to putting that effort in to ripping out the solution then trying to patch some bug in a defunct vendor's solution.

This sounds like Acceptance testing after Acceptance testing when rally big stakes have already been staked.

I don't think it applies if your company calls itself a startup.