[SPG_Active_Members] Your letter of 29th July

[Richard P. Gabriel]

I want to second Henry's comments. I just completed a disappointing 
series of interactions with Ms Jabloner and some others regarding the 
donation of a major Lisp collection, including code, photographs, and 
documents by a friend of mine in Germany who is retiring. The 
collection was part of a Lisp History museum he maintained at 
Erlangen.

In his proposal to CHM he requested that Guy Steele and I be special 
curators to oversee the cataloging and preservation of the materials. 
We had agreed to this. I will without humility state that Steele and 
I are the most qualified people in the world to understand what is in 
this collection and to assist a professional archivist to catalog the 
material. Steele and I wrote the definitive history of Lisp, have 
been involved with its development for 40+ years, and I have worked 
with John McCarthy for about 30 years. We also put together a 90 
minute joint talk on the history of programming languages which is 
regarded by many as the best computer science talk ever delivered.

In her emails to me, Ms Jabloner hinted that the CHM would be able to 
find capable local volunteers to handle the material, and she 
apparently made no effort to investigate the merit of having two 
world-class volunteers at her disposal.

The donor and I therefore looked long and hard for another 
institution to donate the material to, and in the end, because he was 
retiring from his University, he finally agreed to donate his 
material tothe  CHM.

I found the crudity of my interactions with the CHM to be absurd and 
in concert with what Henry has indicated.

			-rpg-

At 10:36 AM -0700 8/21/09, Len Shustek wrote:
>I'm sorry you feel that way, Henry.  We do, in fact, invest 
>considerable effort in preserving software.  I think we are the only 
>institution in the world to have a full time software curator on 
>staff.  We have collected many gigabytes of code, and hundreds of 
>thousands of pages of documents.  I am personally involved in 
>working with companies like IBM and Apple to release restrictions on 
>source code so that we may make them publicly accessible, and in 
>getting them to help us find software that has been "lost".  We do 
>oral histories of software pioneers.  We have experimented with an 
>exhibit on software ("Mastering the Game: A History of Computer 
>Chess"). We are including the software story in the big exhibit we 
>are working on.  We have inducted software innovators as Fellows of 
>the museum.
>
>I think we are doing our part.  There is certainly more that could 
>be done.  I'm sorry you think our efforts are insufficient. I look 
>forward to welcoming you back as a member when you wish to help us 
>make progress.
>
>Regards,
>Len Shustek
>Chairman, Computer History Museum
>
>
>
>At 09:43 AM 8/21/2009, Henry Gladney wrote:
>
>>Thank you very much for your invitation to renew my CHM membership.
>>
>>I regret having to inform you that, for the time being at least, I 
>>will not renew.
>>
>>This is because I am disappointed that CHM some time ago quit 
>>credible interest in preserving software, which I regard as of 
>>commensurate importance to the areas that it is investing in.  This 
>>happened notwithstanding the fact that there are clear ways of 
>>achieving this relatively inexpensively and the efforts of the 
>>now-suspended volunteer Software Preservation Group.
>>
>>I will reconsider membership if/when this policy decision is 
>>reviewed and CHM displays plausible interest and promising activity 
>>in the area.  I trust that you will inform me if and when this 
>>happens.
>>
>>Best wishes, Henry
>>
>>H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     <http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/> 
>>http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/   (408)867-3933
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>
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