[LINK] Looking for some advice from the link 'brain'

[Karl Auer]

On Mon, 2007-04-02 at 08:17 +1000, andrew clarke wrote:
> Of course, everything we create will disappear eventually, but...

That's why I said that it depends on how long you need to retain your
archived materials for. If you really want to preserve them for the
millennium, you best bet, amazingly enough, is probably to print,
compress, seal and bury them. Paper survives amazingly well. Of course,
your access times go up...

> However, open source software generally has nothing to gain from this
> behaviour, so good backward compatibility with file formats is usually
> fairly common.

Fine - but you are still thinking mere decades (if that), not centuries.

> In any case it's usually not difficult to obtain old versions of open
> source software, if the need arises - it's not as though you have to
> scour eBay for OpenOffice 1.x because you lost your original CD.

How hard would it be for you to convert ten thousand Edison phonograph
rolls?  How about ten thousand player piano rolls into (say) midi? How
about ten thousand clay tables imprinted with cunieform into, say,
English?

The chances that the hardware or software to read a 2007 MSWord document
(which version?) OR a 2007 OO document in a hundred years time are
minimal, in five hundred years negligible. Hence the question - how long
are you really planning for?
 
> And if you really need to, you can pay someone to patch the source code
> to your requirements at some stage in the long-term future, which is
> essentially impossible with closed source software.

Kind of assumes that you have the source code, that you have a compiler,
that you have a machine able to run that compiler, someone conversant
with an archaic computer language... seriously, it will NOT happen. If
the content is valuable to you and you think it will still be valuable
in fifty years' time (let alone a hundred or a thousand years' time)
then you have to convert and copy, copy and convert - continuously.

It's generally a great deal cheaper to be a bit more realistic about the
value of your records.

Otherwise you are practising the digital equivalent of human cryogenic
storage - namely exercising a pious hope that someone, somewhere,
someday will solve your problem.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)