
Software Heritage - ingve
https://www.softwareheritage.org/
======
lotyrin
If only the software itself weren't so fragile.

Because of the hype around conversational UI lately, I was curious to start up
an example of such from a half century ago, hook it up to Slack and provide
people some historical context, but it was written targeting an interpreter
which I couldn't find a copy of for a machine I couldn't find a working
emulator for. (BTW, If anyone has a working way to emulate a PDP-10 on 64 bit
linux, and an image for that machine providing MacLisp, please let me know -
<username>@gmail.com.)

Maybe that will never happen for today's languages, operating systems or
architectures, but I wonder if in 2065 a curious engineer would, even if a
solution for his curiosity existed in this archive, be able to get something
working (within some economical limits upon his effort).

Too rarely is code written in a way that it does much other than happen to
work, definitely not in a fashion that makes future code archeologists likely
to be able to reapply it's core learning (algorithms, patterns).

~~~
fao_
One emulator is availible here: [http://klh10.trailing-
edge.com/](http://klh10.trailing-edge.com/) A tutorial on getting TOPS-20
here:
[http://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_TOPS-20_V4.1_under_SIMH](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_TOPS-20_V4.1_under_SIMH)
(Or ITS: [http://gunkies.org/wiki/ITS](http://gunkies.org/wiki/ITS))

If those don't provide MacLisp (I think the TOPS-20 image should), then you
might be able to find it (or a link that sets you on the right track) here:
[http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_fa...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_family/)

A manual for MacLISP is here, by the way:
[http://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/meta-
index.html](http://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/meta-index.html) Some assorted
software for the PDP-10 is here (Including TECO!): [http://pdp-10.trailing-
edge.com/](http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/)

The reason I have posted this as a comment, rather than via email is because
too often have I been looking for solutions to a problem, only to discover a
solution was found and _emailed_ to someone else -- denying myself and others
access to the solution!

~~~
lotyrin
Thank you! I somehow dead-ended before finding these.

------
SwellJoe
The name is somewhat unfortunate, as I assumed historical software (like
archive.org does with its old BBS collections, and such), but the roadmap
looks very promising.

Specifically, they're planning search across their entire collection. I just
watched a talk by Yegge about Google's internal code search (for their
gazillion lines of code), and it struck me that if we had something like that
at web scale, it could potentially be a force multiplier...maybe not quite
comparable to the Internet itself or to the Open Source community (both of
which are likely 10x or 100x or even bigger multipliers to productivity), but
certainly a productivity booster.

~~~
tamana
Google used to have public Code Search

~~~
SwellJoe
Yes, and they've open sourced part of that here (at least, I think it is
related, and is also called "Code Search"):
[https://github.com/google/codesearch](https://github.com/google/codesearch)

But, their public code search was not the same as the internal thing, as far
as I know. The internal beast sounds kind of awesome. Here's his talk about it
from a few years ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8)

I think the _really_ useful thing (beyond a mere search engine that has
indexed a lot of source code) is the comprehension of the "guzzintas" and
"guzzouttas" of the code, more than merely a naive word search; i.e. knowing
how pieces interact, so you can search for functions that work with a
particular kind of object, for example, or objects that have the same
properties, or code that interacts with the same API you're working with,
whatever.

------
spc476
I was hoping it would be for older software (say, from before github or even
sourceforge) that's currently scattered across the Internet. I've been trying
to locate the code for the MC6839 [1] and have yet to come across it. I've
come across the binary, but sadly, no source.

[1] A floating point package (IEEE 754) for the 6809 in an 8K ROM (position
independent). Apparently, Motorola wrote it, made datasheets available but
never actually sold any. Then in the very late 80s they (from what I
understand) released the code into the public domain.

~~~
troymc
It seems they're somewhat new and it's natural for them to start with the low-
hanging fruit.

