Proposal: Oldware database

All, I was thinking today about old software (okay, I was playing Master of Orion 1 :-) ) and realized that there may be a service opportunity we have. I don't know if such exists already, please point me there if it does. What I'm thinking of is a central site to point out old software or software for old systems that have been placed in public domain or otherwise made available for nominal charges by their original manufacturers. I'd like to see something like a database containing: Name of package Brief description (maybe two paragraphs) Rating (something like a one-to-five-mice rating, or maybe with valves?) Platform/OS it runs on (database should be sorted on this field) Where to get it Company that made it. Current owner of that company, (includes web-link) Current main product line of that company Person/group responsible for making it available Current business of that person (includes web-link) A couple of examples I know a little about: Lighthouse Design Ltd Office Suite Office Suite, consists of mail, spreadsheet, text, presentation packages vvvv (four tubes out of 5) NeXTStep 3.x http://www.peanuts.org/peanuts/NEXTSTEP/commercial Lighthouse Design Sun workstations/servers ??? ??? OPENVMS 7.3 Operating system, utilities, development tools vvvv VAX, Alpha hardware http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/mount.html DEC HP printers :-) ???? ???? But even here, I don't really know the right people to credit. This seems like a good way to return a bit of good karma to the folks that support old hardware and software, as well as a valuable resource for those of us trying to do vintage computing on a budget. I guess I have not thought far enough into how to limit the database from becoming enormous. I'd say some necessary criteria are; 1) package runs on a "classic" (that is > 10 years old) platform 2) package was at one time sold in the normal software marketplace (i.e. not shareware/freeware/etc since inception) 3) package can now be downloaded or ordered from somewhere for free/cost-of-media/similarly low cost. Comments or suggestions? Some questions I have: a) should there be a separate category for software for classic systems which is still being sold and supported (a la the older Ambrosia shareware games for Mac, like Escape Velocity, or Create! for NeXTSTep 3.3)? b) should there be an "archive pointer" section that points to existing archives of shareware, such as http://www.peanuts.org/ for NeXT stuff? (I think this would be *far* preferable to trying to catalog every single shareware package on every archive....) I don't have any webhosting skills or abilities, so I can't set this up, but if I can help, let me know. -- - Mark 210-522-6025, page 888-733-0967