Meaning
The deliberate, announced phasing-out of a product, service, or feature, typically with a published timeline running through end of sale, end of development, end of support, and final shutdown. More gradual and euphemistic than simply 'discontinuing' or 'killing' a product. Software and business register, chiefly American. Business register; mildly euphemistic, softening the fact that a product is being retired. Regional use: General English; strongest in US tech and business contexts.
Origin
The word is a metaphorical extension of the everyday 'sunset' as an ending, shaped by the older legal and legislative term 'sunset clause', a provision that expires after a fixed period, which predates the software usage and likely primed the verb 'to sunset'. Within computing it became standard vocabulary for planned product retirement, with milestones such as end of sale and end of support, and a connotation of advance notice to users rather than abrupt cancellation (documented in Wikipedia's 'Sunset (computing)' article). Industry guides from bodies such as the Product Marketing Alliance treat sunsetting as a routine strategic process for reallocating resources, not just a response to failure. Precisely when the verb entered tech usage is not pinned to a single documented first use.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- end-of-life (related)
- sunset (verb)
- sunset a product
- sunsetted
Usage Examples
- The company is sunsetting the legacy desktop app at the end of the year.
- After years of declining use, the API was sunsetted with six months' notice.
- Support ends in March, so the sunset timeline is already public.