Hey, I’m wondering if other Scrivener users have thought about the possibility of Literature and Latte (the company that owns Scrivener) shutting down at some point in the future, and what that would mean for the .scriv file. I am looking to switch over, but don’t want to end up in a situation where years of research and writing are stuck on a file that cannot be opened in other platforms. I used to work for a library that found itself in a similar situation, where it moved all its digital files to a company that shut down several years later, and was unable to recover the files, since the file format was no longer valid. Thanks everyone!
I’ve no idea why you have posted this in the iOS forum, which seems an odd place to put it, but you can stop worrying. A .scriv project is not a file per se: it is a “disguised” folder (called a “package” in Mac terminology") inside which are a lot of RTF (and other) files. You can export these any time you like, and you could even compile your project to a format like pdf, mobi, or something else, should you wish to. A .scriv project is not an impenetrable proprietary format like old Word files used to be. You can look inside the package by right-clicking on it and selecting “Show Package Contents” – but don’t mess around with the stuff inside.
I’m assuming all other Scrivener users are reasonably intelligent and don’t stay awake at night worrying about that unlikely scenario.
Even if L&L were to close tomorrow, the software wouldn’t stop functioning. It would just not get updated and might at some stage not be compatible with a newer version of Win or Mac.
The export function would still work, allowing one to export to Word or some other format. The rtf flies in the Scrivener folder would also be readable by a number of other apps.
Probably a few more important real things to worry about such as your hard drive crashing without a backup or many other more statistically likely events.
Most of us are definitely nicer.
As noted above, it would mean nothing in the immediate future after L&L shut down, as the software should continue to work, allowing you to compile/export files from it. But I wouldn’t want to manage that for an enterprise; it’s fine for your own work, since even a prolific writer’s list of projects would be manageable.
Do keep track of all your projects, so that any future format changes can be dealt with by opening all your projects and letting them convert to the new format. There could come a time when a very old project might not be upgradeable due to the lack of an older copy of Scrivener that will run on your computer. Scrivener v1 for Mac vs Modern Macs is/could soon be a problem for people who didn’t upgrade all their old projects as Scrivener changed its format, as the oldest copies of Scrivener won’t run on the newest (to come?) versions of Mac OS. I know that Mac OS X will stop supporting 32 bit software in the near future, which may be the cutoff for being able to download some versions of Scrivener needed to upgrade to the next major release, as Scrivener’s project has changed several times since Mac v1.
What’s with all this stuff? Why did you format URLs to look like the rest of your text, instead of letting them look like the clickable URLs that they are?
???
Yes sometimes even mild ol’ me allows exasperation to show.
Please do note that by using “most” I definitely cut myself out of the “nicer” crowd. 
Are you criticizing Amcmo’s humble self awareness? 
Oh dear.
… or wasn’t “all other” meant to exclude yourself? 8)