[LINK] Software Escrow Deposits

[Alastair Rankine]

Roger Clarke wrote:
> This is a text version, which is less useful, but a bit more readable:
> http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/PaperEscrow.html
>
> Skimming it again for the first time in many years, I'm struck by the 
> fact that I didn't address the issue of copyright licences for the 
> operating system version, compiler, system libraries, application 
> libraries, etc.  I guess we were all more relaxed back then, and 
> assumed that we had the right to take back-up copies.  I can just 
> imagine what Microsoft's licences say about such things these days ...

Quite right Roger. In my experience it is all to easy to introduce 
environmental dependencies into the software build process which must be 
either kept under change control with the source code, or must be 
manually maintained. For example I've worked on a project where a 
specific version, NOT the current version, of the compiler was required 
to build the source code. Similar for the build system, the source 
control system, third-party libraries, etc etc. Sometimes these 
components are supplied by the operating system itself (eg most Linux 
distros) and so there is often a dependency here as well.

Over the years I've come to see the value in creating a project-specific 
canonical build machine on which the release builds of the software are 
to be made. This is left untouched during day-to-day development and 
access to it is controlled closely. In more recent years I've 
experimented with making this a virtual machine, to reduce the 
dependence on physical hardware such that it can be backed up or 
archived off. I think this is pretty future-proof; in 20 years time you 
just have to boot the VM image and you get everything needed to build 
the software, which also makes it a good deliverable for software escrow 
deposits.

But let's not forget the documentation either, this story should sound 
suspiciously familiar to anyone who has worked in the software business 
at one time or another:

http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=97