That which survives: The problem of data longevity

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Emulators and abandonware

So far the work on emulators has proven to be a good solution to this problem of old data. I can run MS-DOS programs on a MacBook! I am not sure this is an important issue. I have plenty of plaintext files from the 80s. We can still run ITS.

The real problem will be proprietary applications which become abandonware - the Lotus 1-2-3s and WordPerfects of the past and of now. What are their legal status, when the company is gone and the application forogtten? You can't beg or borrow a copy of WordPerfect for DOS from the current company which holds the WordPerfect copyrights. You can steal it, but should you have to break the law to get an old application?

The real problem of computer history is preserving programs of the past in working order for future historians. So many programs are simply disappearing. Look at Borland's Museum - they put up a few old programs and quit before they got to the historically significant Turbo C 1.x line. Turbo Pascal 4 is not available there. All this important history is disappearing. If you want these applications anymore - especially since we are reaching the point where the original media is beyond its lifecycle - you almost have to get copies of them which may not be strictly legal.

What implications does copyright law hold for historians who want to collect old software? I've been collecting late 1980s MS-DOS programs. A lot of these are shareware, and the original creators are long gone. Some of them are in limbo, like WordPerfect, where someone owns the copyright but disowns anything to do with the older versions.

Speaking of shareware, another thing that's disappearing - maybe for good - is historical versions of shareware programs. Most limited-disk-space archives deleted old versions when new ones came out, and the older copies are hard or impossible to find. If you want to know what the 1980s version of a shareware program was like, you'll probably only find mid-1990s versions at archives.

BTW - if you don't back up your photos, it's not my problem. I have three different sets of mine in different locations on different types of media.

If your childhood photos were taken on instant cameras, you can't scan them soon enough! The film deteriorates.

Posted by: scott1329   Posted on: 07/03/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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