The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 11/22/21 8:40 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> On 11/22/21 2:59 PM, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk wrote:
>> In my case it's stuff that *I* didn't save and just tossed it because
>> "Why would I ever want this anymore?".  I *really* regret tossing all of
>> the source for stuff I wrote while I was at IBM. It was after all IBM's
>> property (since I wrote it all as an IBM employee) and I doubt any of it
>> survives in any form anywhere, but I still wish I had some of it.  :-(
> 
> Think of all of the software and documentation that may still
> reside/resided in government hands.   I suspect that much of it was
> intentionally and thoroughly destroyed.
> 
> I can think of one project that had 1500 GSA programmers working.  I
> doubt that a single line of that survives.

You would probably be wrong, it likely was archived before
it stopped being used.  But that won't do you any good as
even if you could submit a FOIA request for it the cost of
recovering it would be prohibitive and they would not have
to honor it.  :-)

bill