Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

... but after four decades of accumulated optimization the 3rd fleet software had become classic bloatware, total deadweight.

p. 14

I thought o my own computer and the term bloatware. I have a lot of programs hat I get and them only use a little. Often they are superseded by newer versions or by different programs that take over the functions I originally bought them for. Sometimes the companies that make the software are bough by others and then there is a very strange merging of functions that may leave orphan software on the hard drive. And, now that hard drive space is so cheap, there is often no incentive to delete things I don't event think about anymore. Of course you can get a new machine, as I do almost every year, but, with the mac, it is so easy to just transfer all hat deadweight to the new drive so it looks just like the old desktop, with all its flaws. Will it eventually collapse? How do companies deal with this?