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

Please understand...

[Creepy Crawler]

That the DMCA DOES NOT APPLY outside the USA. However, hardware Digital Restriction Management DOES.

I really dont want strong crypto keeping out of stuff that I OWN, or My CONTENT.

I'td be a neat experiemnt to create a Linux driver that emulates TCPA chips so that stupid software thinks you're auth'ed.

Re:Please understand...

[Lazar Dobrescu]

This is not the only problem the article addresses though. As it is now, there are already tons of old file formats for which the software needed to read it is nearly impossible(or totally impossible) to find. Documents written in those file formats could contain useful, or at the least interesting content, but we can't get to that content.

We are talking here about file formats 30 years old, or even less. Try to imagine what will happen in 200 years. Most of our history will be written to electronic media, and for people that will live in 200 years, the file format used for that media will very probably be undecipherable.

What is the solution? Some say that we need to convert all documents in a more recent file format every x years. That will really become a pain in the ass as the number of archives go higher and higher.

Another trick could be to describe in whole the file format used and attach that description to every file. That, of course, brings up the problem of what file format to use for that description... (will even plain ascii files still exist in 200 years? Maybe not, but I think it is reasonnable to expect that people will at least still have an idea of how to read them...)

Comparing this to the problem faced for dead languages gives a good idea of the repercussions... There is already countless documents written in very old ages that we cannot decipher because the language used to write it is loss. People are working all their lives trying to understand a dead language. But with computers, we're not talking about something that happened 4000 years ago, but 30 years ago... That means that in the course of your lifetime, You could see obsolete file formats 3 times!

Someone will need to find a solution for this, and preferably before the problem happens for real...

Re:Please understand...

[DiscoDave_25]

It's not just the file format that will be the problem (although MS aren't helping in that respect) but simply ensuring that the media that the file is written on can be read. Physical media degrade and the hardware to read them become obselete. An example of this was the BBCs Doomsday disk which contained a huge amount of information (for those days) on a laser disk that is today virtually unreadable. Thankfully this has been recently transferred onto DVD before ALL the readers died but just because someone can understand HOW to read a file doesn't mean they'll be able to access it in the first place.

Explain the Pyramids?

[Yohahn]

This would explain the pyramids, if in the past IP laws of ancient cultures prevented sharing of ideas.

HA HA!

[Thud457]

It's the burning of the library of Alexandria all over again. This time, on the fires of corporate profit. Just remember, as we slide into another dark age, you're the ones that used Microsoft Office!

Storage of old data / hardware

[CaffeinatedMouse]

So, I should be saving the 200 lbs of DEC VMS manuals, Our old VAX, all the tapes, and keep our TU-85 tape drive under service contract? How much is this all worth. Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep that hardware running? If you want to keep the code, what is the point if you don't have hardware to run it on, unless you're going to develop some emulator. Don't get me wrong I think it's a horrible shame that all those hours of engineering to develop the hardware and software is finally being trashed. There are some amazingly great ideas that were used to make that stuff. But at what cost do you preserve it?

Re:here's an easy howto:

[danimrich]

CD's degrade over time, their lifetime is estimated to be 100 years maximum. CD-R's can become unusable after a couple of days of being exposed to mountain sun, and will probably not last more than 15 years. In the meantime, the computer equipment will develop to a point where CD's are not needed any more, because there is better technology available. So it will become necessary to store the devices that were used to read them (i.e. whole computers). But these devices are partly made of stuff that decomposes over time, like rubber in bearings etc. Conserving data is not as easy as it seems. I wonder whether it'd be more efficient to print out the source codes on acid-free paper and store them like books - or perhaps microfiches - in a number of locations around the world.

Re:Central Point Software

[JoeD]

Yeah, and every copy of it I ever saw had been pirated.

Re:full article text, no pass required

[mozumder]

You know, it really isn't fair-use to repost an entire article from another website site.

Other technologies go obsolete too, So what?

[G4from128k]

A number of years ago Scientific American had a article lamenting the loss of intellectual assets with the inevitable degradation of old software, documentation, media, computers, and the like. Yet the same issue had another article on changes in the canned-goods industry (the rise of new canning technologies). While the first article bitterly mourned the loss of software-related knowledge and assets, the second article made no such mention of the corresponding loss of canning-related knowledge and assets.

Why is obsolete software technology worth preserving where obsolete manufacturing technologies are not? In a 100 years, will we really need access to the billions of JPEGs that were spewed out by digital cameras everywhere? I am not arguing for ignoring history (even though those that learn from history are also doomed to repeat it), but I am wondering about the double-standard. What realms of human knowledge and invention are worth saving, and which are not?

BTW, for the record, I still have old documents and applications from my Mac 128k and I might even have a paper tape copy of a old APL program that I wrote 25 years ago. But then I am a certified packrat.

A joke

[KillerHamster]

This article reminds me of a joke one of my CS professors told us (I hope I remember it right):

The year was 2015. Joe, a programmer, was getting up in years and decided he wanted to have his body frozen after he died. He made the arrangements, and when the time came, he was frozen and placed in a government facility. Time passed, and he was forgotten.

Jump ahead a few centuries... suddenly Joe finds himself conscious again! He is on a lab table surrounded by strange looking people in uniforms. Their leader, speaking through a translator, welcomes Joe back to life.

Joe is amazed! There are so many questions he wants to ask, but first he says, "Why did you bring me back to life?"

The leader answers, "Well, the year is 9999. Y10k is coming up, and your file says you know Cobol."

Re:Knuth is only one foundation that won't be lost

[Kaa]

The most fundamental concept in computer science is logic, not algorithms (or worse programming languages). If a 'programmer' hasn't written a program in a low level language like C or assembler, the hiring manager should beware. Without hands-on experience with the fundamentals of computer science that person is lacking at the most basic level, regardless of whether he knows 1 language or 50 languages. He is handicapped.

Bullshit.

"Computer science is about computers in the same way astronomy is about telescopes" --Edsgar Dijkstra

Programming isn't about knowing how to twiddle bits in registers or even how to leverage strengths of a particular processor.

Programming is about dealing with complex problems which can be solved by manipulation of information. I would say the the quality a programmer needs most of all is not logic or math, but just the ability to hold and manipulate large and complicated structures inside his head. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with assembler, low-level languages, ALUs, bits, etc. etc.