2 Nov
2011
2 Nov
'11
1:47 p.m.
Al Kossow wrote:
And what prevents them from "archiving"
anything you send them?
I'm not really sure what you mean by that. People send us stuff to
archive. Sure, there is not much point sending SPS stuff if it's not
in scope for the project because that project is only concerned with
preservation of unmodified and undamaged commercial software. Our
commercial venture KryoFlux does provide a service to help people
generate IPFs. That is something else entirely and completely
independent from SPS (other than the same people are involved, and it
uses technology developed for SPS). That is a professional service as
you would expect, any data generated is destroyed as per an agreed
contract.
Nothing stops anyone "archiving" other people's data. Most people
don't do it because it is unethical - I am not sure why you might
think it would be different for us?
My feelings exactly. I can't imagine any
professional archive taking this group seriously, and it is
completely opposite of CHM's policy of preserving and making available any
information on underlying
media formats that we find.
I'd be interested to understand why you think this. What are we doing
wrong? Is it wrong to want to fund our preservation work by starting a
commercial venture? What are we not making available? We've released
the IPF library source, including an extremely accurate, cycle exact
FDC emulator. We also have tons and tons of information on the SPS
website about how things work (WIPs). IPF files contain the
information about each disk formats, and now that is open, I am not
really sure what else we can do? I am genuinely interested, because we
do want to do the right thing (even if it might take us a while).
Thanks,
Kieron