Internet Archive’s Historical Software Collection is the Best Thing That Has Ever Happened to Software Preservation
November 26th, 2013 by Benj Edwards
Three cheers for Jason Scott and his push to create a JavaScript-based port of the MESS emulator platform. The result, the Internet Archive’s Historical Software Collection, is nothing short of brilliant.
The collection puts dozens of vintage computer games and applications at your fingertips by allowing you to run them, emulated, from a browser window. It’s a huge step forward for preserving the heritage of our software culture. Here, ease-of-access is key.
I’ve been horribly remiss by not mentioning this earlier — but better late than never for something this important.
November 26th, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Wrote about this myself just the other day along with some mentioning of the big legal problems our Royal library is facing right now. They have a little over 5000 games and programs in their archives but they aren’t allowed to make any backup copies with current legislation. So when the original media the software is stored on begins to deteriorate – and in some cases I understand it already has – there’s no legal way to preserve it.
I think what the IAHSC has begun to do is the way to go, not only to preserve software but to make it easily accessible as well. Still, for that to happen in Sweden we need to influence our politicians now!
November 27th, 2013 at 7:42 am
it’s awesome to see how far javascript has grown. from a simple animation tool to a full blown programming awesomeness!