[plug] FOSS condemned for data archival - don't let it go unchallenged

[Bernd Felsche]

Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au> wrote:

>Admittedly, part of bitrot is also the fact that the media you're
>storing stuff on may not have a reader that can read it any more - look
>at 7 track mainframe tapes for instance.

>Of course the media will deteriorate, (unless put into a special field
>where time does not pass, which I've just invented, but am having
>difficulty implementing ;-)  ). It would be a great help to keep the
>application, the OS and whatever else made the backup, including the
>hardware.

>Add to that the likelihood of just losing the data, as with NASA and
>some of the moon landing data.

NASA "lost" much of their data because they didn't document the
format. The tapes are still readable with small errors; but the
details of data structure have been "forgotten".

>FOS should be less vulnerable to the shifting of the application, as
>where we want to open a Word 1 document in MS Office 2007 (or whatever),
>because the formats ARE open and documented and a "reader app" can be
>written (probably).

>It will, of course, be equally susceptible to the physical degradation
>problems.

I can still read my punch-cards and paper tapes from 1978. Even by
eyeball.

Magnetic media does suffer ... but it depends on the bit density and
the conditions under which it's stored.

Optical media also deteriorate. Some of it very rapidly in e.g. the
interior of a car.

There is only one solution: Keep rotating the bits to fresh media
every x moons if the bits are in data that are important.

>And, yes, if OS were more in use in science, finance, office, etc, the
>physical problems WOULD be present, the "what does a bit in this
>position mean?" problems would be, perhaps, less problematical.

It illustrates that openness is better than ad-hoc data storage
formats. Open software's data formats can be untangled as long as
the format definitions or the source code to the software are
preserved somewhere. Openness increases the likelihood of either
over the long term.

Keep some old media drives so that you can move the data, including
source code archives to fresh media.
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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