[SCC_Active_Members] Panel on Collecting Historical Software

[Philip Gust]

I mentioned at the last meeting that I had proposed a panel on 
Collecting and Preserving Historical Software at BayCon 2006.  I'm 
happy to let you know that the panel was approved by the BayCon 
program committee.

BayCon is the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Science Fiction and 
Fantasy Convention.  It will be held Memorial Day weekend, May 26-29 
2006 at the San Jose DoubleTree Hotel.  You can find out all 
about  BayCon at http://www.baycon.org. CHM's very own Chris Garcia 
had the dubious distinction of being the Toast Master last year. It's 
a very cool weekend with something for almost everyone.  The cost for 
all four days is only $70, and includes all the parties, panels, 
classes,, etc. A real bargain --  highly recommended.  Day passes are 
available, although I don't know the prices right off.

The panel is schedule from 10am to 11am on Sunday in the Pine 
conference room.  The good news is that this room can hold about 150 
people.  The bad news is that the panel is the morning after the main 
partying and costume masquerade night.  So tell your friends who 
might be attending BayCon to come support us by showing up for the 
panel!  Kathe and I will also be postering heavily to drum up 
attendees.  I also plan to ask CHM whether it might be willing to 
donate a few items of merchandise for some kind of drawing to spark 
attendance, and provide promotional material about the museum to hand out.

Several CHM people who are involved in historical software collection 
and preservation have expressed interest in being on the panel, 
including Jonathan Cheyer, Al Koslow, and Randall Neff.  We probably 
have room for a couple more people.  If anyone is interested, please 
contact me ASAP.

The panel's aim is to provide a good overview of the subject to 
intelligent lay people. Here are some topics I've sketched out so far 
to help structure the discussion, . I'd appreciate any suggestions 
from anyone on this.

o Motivations
         - preserve significant software for its own sake
                 - use emulator to run software

         - preserve software associated with a hardware restoration project
                 - run software on restored hardware

o Staffing
         - best to find people who wrote or worked on original software

o  Methodologies
         - opportunistic collection from retirees
         - focused collection on a specific topic

o Running software
         - historical hardware
         - use of emulators
         - need to create new supporting software or recreate missing software

o Media issues
         - paper tape
         - mag tape
         - punch cards

o Legal issues
         - Types of IP
                 - patents
                 - trademarks
                 - copyrights
         - Locating current owner
                 - sources for finding evidence of ownership
                 - orphaned works
         - Getting permission from current owner
                 - issue: what if owner doesn't know they even own it?
         - Collecting in absence of permission
                 - Dark archives

o Building communities
         - Web pages
         - Wikkis




Philip Gust
Nouveau Systems, Inc.
3120 De La Cruz Blvd., Suite 120
Santa Clara, CA 95054

phone: +1 650 961-7992
fax:   +1 520 843-7217

mailto: gust at NouveauSystems.com

Nouveau Systems products seamlessly integrate collaboration, 
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