i think there are two issues here: the collection of raw software artifacts, and the classification of that data. in the former case, time is not on our side. for example. when i heard reports a few months ago that microsoft had terminated their popular Flight Simulator program, i wrote to Ray Ozzie, asking if we could preserve that code. He said he'd look into it, but I never heard back. I suspect that that code base may be lost to time. Frankly, I don't need a shared language to preserve that stuff - i need feet on the street, people close to projects such as these who have a place they can put such code in a place for safe keeping. as for the classification of that data, my personal opinion is that we spend way too much energy worrying about metadata and not enough energy collecting. the metadata will emerge as we collect a larger and larger body of artifacts. get this loose confederation up and running, create mechanisms for collecting and preserving, and i am confident that the classifications will emerge organically, probably in ways we cannot a prior predict. i want a community of indiana jones types who are out there fiercely collecting artifacts before they turn into dust. let us sort out how we present them along the way, for frankly, this we are breaking new ground: how does one present, how does one classify, how does one tell the story, how does one reveal the inner beauty of these objects that spring from human cognition and have no material manifestation other than their operation and some lines of code? Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Chief Scientist for Software Engineering, IBM Research    Voice: (303) 986-2405    Fax: (303) 987-2141    Mobile: (720) 299-8292    E-mail: gbooch@us.ibm.com    E-mail: egrady@booch.com    Skype: gbooch    Video: video.booch.com    Web: <a href=www.handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com>www.handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com</a>    SLURL: Alem Theas @ <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/ThorneBridgeTown/59/154/28?title=ThorneBridgeTown&msg=IBM%20Research">http://slurl.com/secondlife/ThorneBridgeTown/59/154/28?title=ThorneBridgeTown&msg=IBM%20Research</a>    GPS: 39.6195/-105.069 <table width=100%> <tr valign=top> <td>From: <td>Henry Gladney <hgladney@gmail.com> <tr valign=top> <td>To: <td>Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> <tr> <td valign=top>Cc: <td>scc_active@computerhistory.org <tr valign=top> <td>Date: <td>08/22/2009 07:46 AM <tr valign=top> <td>Subject: <td>Re: [SPG_Active_Members] Your letter of 29th July <tr valign=top> <td>Sent by: <td>scc_active-bounces@computerhistory.org</table> <hr noshade> In saying "you've always pushed hard for formalizing the software collection process," you express a misunderstanding.  I'm looking for something else--the ability of repositories and scholars to share stuff in those particular cases in which they want to share, and to annotate by links that show "interesting" relationships of stuff as well as other metadata, sharing those annotations without confusing them with the original materials.  In this, "share" might or might not involve copying. To achieve this without limiting what any institution or individual is able to do and also to support building on other people's similar work requires that certain aspects of metadata follow common conventions.  I.e., it helps immensely to have common methods/representations for how metadata is linked to data and other metadata.  E.g., a reason that you can productively use any library in the world is that the libraries use common conventions for their catalogues and for library-annotations on the spines of books. Another way of saying the same thing is that a museum collection is useful only if it is a great deal more than a pile of stuff collected into a single room.  Your "loose coalition" would not work without shared language among its members.  An example of shared language might be a common way of identifying works so that anybody can clearly see which are identical and which are different, and also which different ones are related to each other. Best wishes, Henry H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     <a href=http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/>http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/</a>   (408)867-3933 On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 05:37, Tim Shoppa <<a href="mailto:shoppa@trailing-edge.com">shoppa@trailing-edge.com</a>> wrote: Henry Gladney <<a href=mailto:hgladney@gmail.com>hgladney@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > 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. A couple years ago the SPG at CHM sponsored "The Attic and the Parlor", which made it clear to me that they appreciate the loose and broad coalition of individuals and corporations and institutions that preserve software. I also got to hear some of the difficulties (esp. legal ones) and triumphs (CHM's then-new software curator's results) of doing this in the CHM framework. Henry, it seems you've always pushed hard for formalizing the software collection process through the CHM. I've come to the realization that the base of interesting software "in the wild" is tremendously huge and often extremely specialized. I think a loose coalition of software archives and archivists, both professional and non-professional, is the right solution at this point. Tim. <tt>_______________________________________________ SCC_active mailing list SCC_active@computerhistory.org </tt><a href=http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/scc_active><tt>http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/scc_active</tt></a><tt> </tt>