On-line software archives. The difficulties of preserving history.

[tezza]

On-line software archives get mentioned in these forums from time to time. They are great way to preserve history. After all, what is the hardware without the software.

Software is a creative work, but (unlike books) there is no ISBN number and (to my knowledge) original copies don’t sit in libraries somewhere. Like out of print books, you can’t buy "new" old software. Second-hand code is traded, swapped or given away, but the potential exists for some historically significant software to be lost forever. Especially if we are talking source code.

Some folk hold large archives that are available on the web. This is a great way to make old software available to all. However, there are two problems with this.


Copyright laws. – People have a right to insist that their old creative works NOT be made available to the public. However, in most cases the original authors can’t be found to ask permission and/or the job would simply be too big for the archivist even if they could! Legally then, the default is that most archivists break the law by keeping a public download site.

Endurability. – What happens if our archivist dies or for some reason can’t maintain the archive and it suddenly goes off-line. Their family and friends might not be interested in keeping it going and so it ceases to exist. Boof!

Major software archives for well-known platforms that have been on the web have disappeared due to one or other of these reasons. Some history has been lost or fragmented.

I don’t know what the answer is to this problem, but as someone passionate about computer history, it does concern me.

Any comments anyone?

[frozenfire75i]

Well Tezza my 2 cents on this is as follows,

About the copyright I think 95% of all your vintage software is from companies that are no longer around, if they are most of them have turned in to, merged or doing something totally different then what they were doing in 1985 and before. So I think much of them would not care…. The ones such as Microsoft regarding DOS BASIC ECT I don’t think cares to much either. What are they going to get by running around online shutting down little pockets of vintage computer folks messing with DOS 2.1! They will be going after the new programs such as Office and Vista. And the same goes for the other companies if they are still around that is.

Some will say oh it’s not right to offer and download software for free. Well in order for it not to be right you must be stealing from or hurting them… I don’t think we would be doing earthier of them. How could you be stealing is not for sale not useable by 90% of the world? And software is not tangable? And how could we be hurting them? Well if anything we are helping them keeping the past alive and keeping there once hard work around!

On Part 2 I think the software archives will be around for a long long time if they are downloadable on A DVD or short. Most of the folks on here dead in 35 or so years with most members over 40 and in 50’s But there is young ones including myself that are in there teens and early 20’s that can carry on the software archives for another 60 years and if the hardware is still around then and working I am sure more young ones will keep going! So I don’t any fears about the that part of it!

Anyway got any good links or DVD’s burned of archives?

[CityArchitect]

To mind mind everyone should take a copy of the archives to preserve them, after all, you could probably fit everything written for vintage computers so far in history on one usb flash drive ;-)

[DarthKur]

...Most of the folks on here dead in 35 or so years with most members over 40 and in 50’s ...


Now there's a real cheery notion to brighten my day. :-| . I plan on being around for a lot more than 35 measly more years. In fact I'm counting on the advance of medical science to prolong life indefinitely. That being said I'll do my part to keep the past alive for a good long time. ;)

[Terry Yager]

I'm doing what I can to preserve what I have in my possession, but the media is getting older all the time. Does anybody want to take these Apple ][ disks off my hands and archive them on the I-Net??? (They're all free/shareware, so copyright is not an issue).

--T

[Chuckster_in_Jax]

Tezza,

This is a good point to make about how volatile the software is that we need in order to keep our old machines running. Apparently when Don Maslin passed away, there was a lot of software that no one had but Don. It possiblly has vaporized forever. Another example is Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 website. It was the best website for manuals, disk images and just about any information you would ever want on a TRS-80. Apparently someone felt their copyright was being infringed and threatened to sue. Ira has been forced to take everything off except images of the front covers of manuals and photos of diskettes. It was just fine with the copyright holder that no one would ever buy, download or have access to the disks and manuals unless they had a original that was 25-30 years old. I was lucky to get several manuals and disk images from the site before it was gutted. Even got Xenix (not sure if it is for Model II, 12, or 16).

I remember one website I visited that had a whole page full of files. One of the last buttons was: "Click here to download everything on this page". I wish there were more sites like that. It would ensure that if something happened to the site, there would be numerous people with a copy of every file they had. Since those old files are small, it shouldn't take much bandwidth for transferring an entire archive.

[tezza]

Tezza,

This is a good point to make about how volatile the software is that we need in order to keep our old machines running. Apparently when Don Maslin passed away, there was a lot of software that no one had but Don. It possiblly has vaporized forever. Another example is Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 website. It was the best website for manuals, disk images and just about any information you would ever want on a TRS-80. Apparently someone felt their copyright was being infringed and threatened to sue. Ira has been forced to take everything off except images of the front covers of manuals and photos of diskettes. It was just fine with the copyright holder that no one would ever buy, download or have access to the disks and manuals unless they had a original that was 25-30 years old. I was lucky to get several manuals and disk images from the site before it was gutted. Even got Xenix (not sure if it is for Model II, 12, or 16).



Yes. those two examples were exactly the ones I was alluding to. It's a real shame those archives have been lost to easy public access. There may be more examples of archives disappearing in the future in the same way. It's an area of concern for which there are no ready answers, at least under existing legislation.

Tez

[tezza]

One possible solution would be for a technology museum of international standing (e.g. The Smithstonian or similar) to take on the job of collection, categorising and making available ex-commercial (or notable) programs for various vintage platforms via the web. This would preserve them for all time.

This negates the problem of a endurability. Even when the original machines (and we) are long gone, there still may be emulators around people may want to use when researching this period of technological revolution. They will need software images.

The copyright issue requires a law change, one which has International agreement/applicability.

How about if a software author or publishing house doesn't want their old software available to everyone? One way to deal with this could be to announce the intention of an International archive, and give authors a certain amount of time (say 12 months) to say whether or not they want their old stuff as a public download. The default is for it to happen if the owners don't say otherwise. It they object, then it's not made public, although those owners would be encoraged to lodge a copy in the archive, to preserve it, and for those who might want to check it out formally for research.

Anyway, this is just an idea. I'm sure there are plenty of fishhooks and I haven't thought through it in any depth. However, it would seem to me to be worth considering. Such a plan would ensure history is preserved.

Problem is, both the lawmakers and the large museums probably have higher priorities.

Tez

[Sharkonwheels]

In the case of Ira's site - send him an email if you need something.
The whole ordeal also got started with a kid who D/L his ENTIRE site, and mirrored it, as well as another selling copies of Ira's DVD's on fleaBay.

T

[hargle]

One possible solution would be for a technology museum of international standing (e.g. The Smithstonian or similar) to take on the job of collection, categorising and making available ex-commercial (or notable) programs for various vintage platforms via the web. This would preserve them for all time.


These folks are trying to do just that:

http://www.ndiipp.uiuc.edu/pca/?Project_Details:Project_Goals

Or so I think. I haven't seen any progress yet.

I've been in contact with them (offering to help with IBM PC floppy copy protection issues) and they responded saying "thanks! we'll get back to you".

What I think is interesting is that when a university does something like this, people get paid to work on it, the copyright holders don't seem to mind because "it's preservation!"

When a group like TOSEC or even myself, with the DOS collection that I'm working on, who do this for the love of doing it and not a paycheck, it's forced underground onto shady bittorrent sites and everyone uses aliases because we're afraid of the backlash from copyright holders. Suddenly it goes from preservation to piracy when it's not an institution doing the work. :(