Dan Bricklin on Software That Lasts 200 Years

Lansdowne writes "Dan Bricklin, author of VisiCalc, has written a great new essay identifying a need for software that needs to last for decades or even centuries without replacement. Neither prepackaged nor custom-written software is fully able to meet the need, and he identifies how attributes of open source might help to produce long-lasting 'Societal Infrastructure Software'."

Comments

Re:now history depending on electricity

[I confirm I'm not a]

The point that the author makes here is really that without electricity we will lose great parts of recent history.

When I was at secondary school, in Britain during the 1980s, we participated in a UK-wide project to create a modern version of the "Domesday Book", the 11th-century record of people and property.

The project we worked on was recorded onto a (state-of-the-art) laserdisc so it would "last through the generations".

Last year I read an article saying that dedicated enthusiasts were desperately trying to assemble a working laserdisc system, in order to archive all the data collected just 20 years earlier.

Moral: it's not just electricity we need to worry about - media and the equipment necessary to access specific media is vital, too.