29 Jan
2009
29 Jan
'09
9:27 a.m.
I think typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-)
I bet it still exists in a lot of cases, but
everybody's forgotten exactly
where
I respectfully disagree. Once a product reaches end of life, it is disposed of.
Unlike entertainment products, which can be resold to the next generation, old
software has been perceived as having no commercial value and is discarded either
to avoid its availability for legal discovery, when a company is sold, or when they
need the space or get tired of paying storage costs for it.
I was hoping that working as the software curator at CHM would open more doors
for finding old software (esp sources). It has not, with a few notable exceptions
like HP. The stuff REALLY is gone.
The main source now for old software are the people that worked on it, who kept
copies outside of the company they worked for.
29 Jan
29 Jan
9:34 a.m.
"The main source now for old software are the people that worked on it, who kept
copies outside of the company they worked for."
I think thats the only way for my old code to remain in existence.
I too have seen the "it must be tidy" types just throw what they dont
understand away.
Time I dusted off my disassemblers I used to reverse engineer for the day job.
Dave Caroline
9:40 a.m.
Al Kossow wrote:
I have a contact at Getronics, the company which swallowed Wang. He is
the last person still supporting old Wang 2200 products and whatnot. In
one of many down-sizings of his office, he contacted me and sent me a
pallet of manuals, disks, and hardware that he was otherwise going to
toss. Unfortunately he has gone silent, so I fear he may have be
downsized too. :-(
A while back I pressed him to see if source still existed for any of the
microcode releases and he said he doubted it, and if it did still exist,
he didn't know where it was located.
Like Al said, the best hope is that some packrat broke company rules and
tucked away a copy as a memento when they left the company.
I think
typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-)
I bet it still exists in a lot of cases, but everybody's forgotten
exactly where
I respectfully disagree. Once a product reaches end of life, it is
disposed of. 
9:48 a.m.
New subject: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc (Software and Engineering Work product destruction)
I was at Microdata in the lat 70's when they decide to get rid of all
their older 16xx mini computer software. I consisted of 30' of 6' card
racks. Each tray was several releases of their drivers, and they had
essentially maintained an svn or software revision repository in cards.
I was the only one who had had any interest since starting work there 5
years earlier. I was luck to be given access to the cards for 2 months
before they were recycled. I could have taken them, but didn't have the
room at the time to do that, so I copied all of the latest revisions to
1/2" tape and stored it. This remains the only record of the source of
this that exists.
I also had the chance to get a copy of most of the other drawings and
was able to retain those for historical purposes.
I know the attitude of the management was 100% that it was not of any
value once customers were deemed to all be gone. Read that Paying
customers. My copies did save them in a couple cases doing favors for
some who called too late.
I have been fortunate to be given access to discards at two other
companies as well and did my best to maintain the data, both engineering
and software.
One company I worked for in the last 10 years discarded their "golden"
master eproms and pal sets (to me) as hardware scrap.
If you or someone is not there in the right place at the right time, and
the conditions exist to legally obtain the stuff does not exist, then
things are just destroyed as Al says.
I doubt that the conditions I have encounted as described above would
happen in these IP crazy days.
Jim
Al Kossow wrote:
<snip>
I respectfully disagree. Once a product reaches end of life, it is
disposed of.
Unlike entertainment products, which can be resold to the next
generation, old
software has been perceived as having no commercial value and is
discarded either
to avoid its availability for legal discovery, when a company is sold,
or when they
need the space or get tired of paying storage costs for it.
I know that simple stupidity or lack of vision also causes this and the
question about saving the goods is usually asked with about the
intelligence of the poor girlfriend in the current Carl's Jr. ad running
who thinks she will get a steak dinner at Carls because of some Steak
menu item.
"oh you mean we could have used that again? huh"
Jim
11:38 a.m.
cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote:
I can second that disagreement. Everywhere I've worked at, the
company cares about the current product. The previous versions
may well sit in a code repository but usually that's because
no-one cares enough about the disk space to go and recover it.
I expect that there are exceptions, but they're few and far
between in my experience.
Antonio
I think
typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-)
I bet it still exists in a lot of cases, but
everybody's forgotten
exactly > where
I respectfully disagree. Once a product reaches end of life,
it is disposed of.
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
arcarlini＠iee.org -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
frustum＠pacbell.net -
jws＠jwsss.com