Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

github.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#51

Post by jedieaston »

rwky wrote: post #28

This means that after the apocalypse people will be able to reclaim the Linux source code but not Windows. I find it poetic that open source may one day be the norm.

I’m thinking that someone at Microsoft may have snuck the code for Windows into the archive after it was pulled from Github. Between Windows and OS X, a ton (most?) of the end user software would be unusable to a future generation in its original form since they didn’t have the desktop OS it was used on.

Ironically, 500 years from now, they may think that the year of the Linux desktop was 2008 :-D

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#53

Post by grogenaut »

What I really want from github is to allow people who own open source projects who don't want to own them anymore to just hand them off for escrow so that at a later date a reputable group like apache can maintain them if needed.

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#54

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #49
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They drag the 200 platters out into the 24hr sunshine, plug the solar panel into the Raspberry Pi, point its camera through a magnifying glass at the first frame, and let the QR app they happen to have on the Pi's micro--SD card do its thing. A couple of seconds later they have the first 2,900 bytes on the USB drive. It takes another couple of seconds to move to the next frame by hand. So they sit there for 383 da…

> " But what about 200 years after the apocalypse? Or maybe just 1,000 years from now, no apocalypse needed? " -Thanks to flash memory cell charge leakage, I'd be surprised if the micro-SD card or USB drive kept its data for more than 3-5 years. They're designed for low cost, not longevity. -The electrolytic caps will probably have dried out and failed by 50-100 years. -The plasticizers used will have evaporated away…

Right, so it wouldn't be a 2020 computer. It would be whatever new computer they've built.

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#55

Post by sudhirj »

grogenaut wrote: post #53

What I really want from github is to allow people who own open source projects who don't want to own them anymore to just hand them off for escrow so that at a later date a reputable group like apache can maintain them if needed.

Couldn’t Apache just make a fork and announce it? Or is this just about the convenience and marketing?

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#56

Post by zaptrem »

jedieaston wrote: post #51
rwky wrote: post #28

This means that after the apocalypse people will be able to reclaim the Linux source code but not Windows. I find it poetic that open source may one day be the norm.

I’m thinking that someone at Microsoft may have snuck the code for Windows into the archive after it was pulled from Github. Between Windows and OS X, a ton (most?) of the end user software would be unusable to a future generation in its original form since they didn’t have the desktop OS it was used on. Ironically, 500 years from now, they may think that the year of the Linux desktop was 2008 :-D

https://github.com/reactos/reactos would probably make this less of an issue as well.

Re: The GitHub Arctic Code Vault

#58

Post by grogenaut »

sudhirj wrote: post #55
grogenaut wrote: post #53

What I really want from github is to allow people who own open source projects who don't want to own them anymore to just hand them off for escrow so that at a later date a reputable group like apache can maintain them if needed.

Couldn’t Apache just make a fork and announce it? Or is this just about the convenience and marketing?

If it's done this way then all of the web links stay live, and a new owner doesn't need to be found immediately. Think of it as a special permission holding pool. There are many cases of "done" libraries that need changes later. This would help with them. However when they're not done this way you can spend a few weeks / months trying to get ahold of the author and for them to decide "oh yeah I don't really care about x anymore"
Post reply on HN