Source code escrow is a three party agreement between a software vendor (the depositor), the end user (beneficiary) and the source code escrow company (Escrow London). It is commonly used by companies to protect the source code of a software vendor or to protect the investment of the beneficiary. The objective of a source code escrow agreement is to provide comfort to the end user that if the software vendor is unable or unwilling to support the software, the source code and other critical materials such as documentation can be released to them, ensuring continuity.

During the agreement setup, the depositor (software vendor) will deposit with Escrow London the latest version of the source code which is normally through our automated deposit system directly from GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab and many other popular version control apps or via SFTP/S3 buckets.

To ensure the files are accessible and free of viruses, Escrow London will perform a file integrity test as part of the source code escrow deposit. This source code escrow deposit would only be released to the beneficiary (end-user) if the depositor can no longer support or maintain the software. The requirements for deposit and release of the source code are all clearly defined and negotiated upon in the source code escrow agreement.