Patent ID: 8336028

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system, for providing an output indicative of a sustainability of a software product, comprising: retrieving metadata associated with source code of the software product, the metadata identifying at least one historical characteristic of the source code of the software product, the at least one historical characteristic identifying information regarding the development or maintenance of the source code of the software product; correlating the metadata with current information of an organization responsible for providing the software product; determining a sustainability measure of the source code of the software product based on results of correlating the metadata with the current information of the organization, wherein determining a sustainability of the source code of the software product based on results of correlating the metadata with the current information of the organization comprises: determining if at least one person responsible for modification of the source code is currently in a position to provide support for the software product based on the correlation of the metadata with the current information of the organization; and calculating the sustainability measure based on results of determining if at least one person responsible for modification of the source code is currently in a position to provide support for the software product; and generating one or more report outputs based on the determined sustainability measure of the source code of the software product.