

Saving old software from extinction in the age of cloud computing - d99kris
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/saving-old-software-from-extinction-in-the-age-of-cloud-computing/

======
jmsmistral
Moving our usage totally to the cloud is not a great idea, it seems. Yes, we
get convenience, but at the same time lose autonomy, control, and freedom over
our computing.

RMS has a good (albeit slightly extreme) view on this:
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-
really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-
serve.html)

This view has people discussing the issues e.g.
[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/09/why-
st...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/09/why-stallman-is-
wrong-when-he-calls-cloud-computing-stupid/)

All in all, if we as users demand web apps that respect our freedom, and
employ non-proprietary file formats, then this would be a non-issue. There are
a number of ways this could be implemented... one would be to provide a
software package (with source code), available to be downloaded and run
locally on one's machine, if the product changes or gets trashed. Of course,
complete access to your online data is necessary (i.e. ability to download
your data as when you please).

~~~
fiatjaf
That's why everybody needs Sandstorm:
[https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-
ap...](https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require-
federated-hosting.html)

~~~
jmsmistral
That's actually pretty cool!... and it's licensed under the Apache v2 license,
which makes it free software ;)

------
kephra
An interesting though, especially the view on MMORPGs.

I wonder that he did not name Second Life as a prime example of how cloud
based content could rot. First mainy normal products are no longer available,
because the creator stopped playing and selling them. I still get weekly PMs
about old products, even if I do not play SL for about 4 years. Often about
products that are not mine, but where I only contributed, e.g. in megaprims or
scripts, and that somewhere show my name. People hope that I have a full
permission copy, and could sell them under the hand. Sometimes for extreme
prices!

An other example are simulators that go away. Main income for Linden labs is
land tax and content just poofs away, when a player decides that paying land
tax no longer makes sense. Linden labs will restore the island from backup and
run it on own costs, in very few cases like Svarga, if massive player demand
it. But I can only name this one case. e.g. 6 years ago more then 3 dozen
dance clubs showed my DMX based light and dancefloor system. Today its only
one club left. I dont know if my Laser sailing boats are still rezzed some
beaches, even if there was a fleet of a few hundred racing regular. And I can
think about a good dozen of my products where I'm sure, there they are nowhere
displayed anymore.

Last we have classical dependency rot. Second Life allows scripting, and
scripts can communicate with other scripts on same and remote simulators, can
act as web clients or web servers, xml-rpc clients and servers and mail
clients and servers. Some products require a backend to work, so the product
will stop working, if the player leaves the game, and stops paying the hosting
cost of the server backend.

 _well_ there is is OpenSim, OpenGrid and other SL server grid clones. Its
nice to run your own grid at home, just for backup of own designs. But you can
not import designs from the maingrid, you can not talk to people on maingrid,
you basically created a single player massive online game backup.

------
mongrol
This article isn't really about old software, it's about software that's
current, built on current webapp technology, that will eventually become old.
Meanwhile, real "old" software, in use by ten's of thousands of enterprises
worldwide, will still be struggling on, nurtured carfully through the
developer renaissance, to fit on infrastructure that was never designed to
host it's like.

------
100k
My recent trip to the Computer History Museum
([http://www.recursion.org/2014/10/16/a-night-with-the-
ibm-140...](http://www.recursion.org/2014/10/16/a-night-with-the-ibm-1401))
had me thinking about this.

I was struck by how _physical_ the exhibits are. For the most part, the
exhibits are old hardware. In some cases, they have the hardware running
software that you can use.

Software from the PC era can be preserved with emulators (assuming its copy
protection can be defeated), but what about internet software? The museum has
a _photo_ of Google's first server, but not much about Google's software.
Should we be preserving screenshots of Google results so we'll know what they
used to look like?

------
fsk
After Google Reader and delicious both died on me, I now try to store all data
on my pc.

