Software Archaeology

Plug1 writes "Salon (day pass needed) has an article about preserving software for historical purposes. It discusses source code archiving, and the effect the DMCA is having on attempts to catalog and analyze legacy code. It will be a shame if in the future a wealth of information is locked away because knoweldge of the underlying technology is lost."

Comments

Re:Please understand...

[TheRaven64]

Repeat after me:

TCPA hardware is not the same as DRM, and is not evil

The TCPA hardware specifies a cryptography co-processor on the mainboard. This can be used for DRM, but it can also be used for offloading things like SSL from the CPU. Emulating the hardware would be no good. Under *NIX, it would just be mounted at /dev/crypto (or something), and emulated if the hardware were not availible. It is the software which manages DRM.

It's a matter of survival

[Andrew Leonard]

I responded to this above once already, but because this is dear to my heart, I'll do it again. Of course Salon isn't going to care if anyone prints out a copy and tapes it to their cube wall. But if a Web site grabs the text and posts it in a place like Slashdot, that deprives us of literally thousands of readers. Many of those readers might otherwise watch and ad and grab the daypass, which is good for our financial health, and some percentage of other readers might even subscribe, which is even better for us.

Technically, it's copyright infringement, but Salon isn't going to devote resources to suing Slashdot or Slashdot readers. If we were going to go that route, we'd start with the Freerepublic assholes, who actively want us to go bankrupt and do everything they can to help us down that road. To slashdot readers, the best appeal I can make is simple.

We want to make a living at what we do, so we can keep doing it. I want to keep paying great technology writers like Rachel Chalmers and Sam Williams to do interesting stories. If we convince enough readers to watch our ads or subscribe, we'll pull off this magic trick. So basically, the way I see it, any time a Slashdot reader posts the full text of a story on Slashdot, it's a vote against our survival, which is ironic, since you wouldn't be posting the stories if you didn't think there was some merit in them, right?