The Don Maslin Software Archive

[Tom Jennings]

On Sun, 15 May 2005 shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote:

>> are you a packrat (as Don apparently was) or a collector?
>
> Don was neither.  He was a true archivist, in this case working
> for the CP/M community.

On the heels of my foolish posting (see accompanying apology) this
sounds a bit off, but here goes:

But don't archivists make their archives available? Clearly, Don's
is not. If Don had been loosely operating an informal library,
then his family would have at least a faint handle on what to do
with it.

My attempt at a point earlier was that he was packratting, making
a big pile of stuff with no real plans for the future. This
appears to be fact.

We've all gone to estate sales of people who did this very thing.
It's a great way to morbidly pick up deals from distraught
families but it's not a way to "archive". This is what I meant as
a lesson to us all.

By all accounts Don was a great guy, friendly and helpful. I just
find it frustrating that this packratting is exalted, and could
have been so easily headed off. That's all.