Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Vintage" == Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> writes:

 Vintage> On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Paul Koning wrote:
 >> When you say "archiving" what span of time do you mean?  A year?
 >> A decade?  A century?  Longer?

 Vintage> Is forever too ambitious? :)

 Vintage> The idea is to create a standard for representing the data,
 Vintage> not a medium.  Media with near-infinite longevity will be
 Vintage> the next undertaking :)

The point of the question: what assumptions are you making about the
people who are trying to read your archive N years from now?  Are they
assumed to be using computers?  If so, what kind?

To look at it differently -- if you handed someone a CDROM, and a
stack of standards describing it (ISO 9660, the Red Book, etc.) but no
computer and no CDROM drive, is that person likely to have enough
information to recover the data on the disk?  I expect the answer is
"no, not even close".

 >> (See also www.longnow.org)

 Vintage> Is there a specific section you want to refer me to?

It's all worth reading, but
http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm seems directly relevant
to the discussion.

   paul