This is totally me just being naive, I don’t work in the software realm but do have an interest possibly one day, but if we have stuff that’s been able to run (seemingly) successfully for years, or maybe even decade, what maintenance needs to even be done on old programs? Is this simply for people discovering security vulnerabilities and patching them? Is there more to it than that?
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There are three categories of maintenance: corrective, adaptive, and perfective. Corrective maintenance is bug-fixing: at any point, a so far undiscovered error may present itself, particularly when the configuration of the software is changed, when the software is used in some peculiar way, etc. Adaptive maintenance may be required when the environment in which the software runs is changed, typically due to compatibility issues when older software is installed on a newer platform (operation system, hardware). Perfective maintenance is, simply put, required when the customer asks for a new feature.
There is also configuration management that may be performed by the user but could also be a part of maintenance by the vendor.
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