The PERSIST Technology Task Force
Consultation Meeting April 20-21, Paris 2015
The purpose of this document is to
-
provide background information on the concept of the Global Repository and
-
outline the objectives for the Consultation sessions scheduled for Monday, April 20, 2015
in the afternoon and for the Technology Taskforce breakout session on April 21, 2015.
Background―Concept of the Global Repository
Preserving digital heritage is an important factor in the global effort to maintain continuity in the
development of the human civilization. With the broad proliferation of digital technologies in all
aspects of our lives, the preservation of digital assets is becoming of paramount importance.
The concept of the Global Repository was conceived as part of the gap analysis that highlighted
the need to preserve software alongside the content. The PERSIST TaskForce has therefore
embarked onto a mission to create an international bank of legacy software. Such a resource
should enable practices and solutions that complement the existing efforts in digital
preservation. Furthermore, it will enable new approaches that are necessary because of the
increasingly computational and interactive nature of digital objects.
Design process
The process of designing the Global Repository will requre several iterations of gathering
requirements from stakeholders (particularly users and solution providers), assessing technical
feasibility, determining the business model (mapping out the value chain, costs, pricing,
marketing) and considering the ortanizational structure and governance model. The objective of
the PERSIST Consultation meeting is to facilitate the requirements analysis and feasibilty
assessments on several key issues.
Here we offer an initial and rather high level description that guide our vision of the Global
Repository.
Global Repository Functions
At minimum, the Global Repository is to support deposition of software executables and
inform the community of the obsolesecence risks for indivdiual software.
Software deposit/hosting
- Store executables of legacy software
- Store source code of legacy software (for open source software)
- Store documentation about the legacy software
- Store information about licenses under which the software has been distributed in
the market place
o Open source licenses
o Licenses of commercial software for enterprises, individuals, etc.
- Test (host/run) legacy software to determine that the software runs within virtual
machines available in the market place
Information services
- Provide information about (new) licenses under which the legacy software can be
used
- Disseminate information about the legacy and contemporary software at risk
1
-
(e.g., the software cannot run any more within contemporary VM-ware)
Enable search over the software repository, based on registry, metadata search,
browsing, recommendations, etc.
Provide remote access/viewing of the software for the information purposes
Provide licensing consultations for end-users, organizations, and vendors.
Policy work
- Drive towards a feasible and sustainable policy for software deposit.
More ambitious scope of the Global Repository opens opportunties for more versatile
exploitation paths, leading to a variety of economic models. For example:
Online access and distribution
- Manage licenses of open source and commercial software
o Distribute licenses for specific use, e.g., use by non-for-profit
organizations, use by individuals with the proof of software purchase,
etc.
o Sell licenses for legacy software for commercial applications
- Distribute VMs with legacy software and licenses
- Distribute documentation about legacy software
- Provide remote access and use of legacy software for operational purposes (i.e.,
leasing software and computation)
- Provide long term hosting of proprietary computational assets (e.g., repository of
software created by individuals and organizations).
Research and Education
- Foster development of education material for developing competence in legacy
software
- Provide courses and accreditations in the ability to run and maintain legacy
software
- Sponsor research in virtualization, software porting, and format transformation.
Exploitation Strategies
The minimal scope of the Global Repository would generate value by providing
- Insurance against the risk of obsolescence for any given software.
o Libraries and archives will be informed if the software is at risk and can, at
that point, begin migration of selected content, if required.
o Solution providers (vendors, internal IT department) will be advised about
the best practice to implement VMs with the legacy software and offer that
to memory institutions
- Enabling education institutions to gain access to software for information purposes,
hands-on learning about historical software and similar
- Enable research institutions to conduct research related to legacy software, etc.
Expanded scope of the Global Repository would be able to generate a value from a broad
range of service. For example, it could offer
- Subscriptions for remote-access to specific classes of software for content
processing
- Hosting of software in perpetuity, w/o not use for production purposes.
- Support for partners to replicated/instantiated software elsewhere for production
purposes (i.e., bringing software to data).
2
Aligned with the vision that the Global Repository would be a critical pillar of our digital future,
we believe that its long term sustainability can be achieved only through a global collaborative
effort among industry, governments, educators, academics, and professional organizations. Thus
we hope to mobilize experts to advise on the organizational and governance structure of the
Global Repository and its sustainability models.
Consultation Meeting – Monday, April 20, 2015
15:30 – 16:45
The UNESCO Repository for Legacy Software as a platform for the global policy
discussion on digital sustainability
CHAIR: David Fricker
1. Who could benefit from a Global Repository for Legacy Software?
2. What suggestions the software tool providers would have about preserving past versions
of the tools, considering that this is their legacy as well;
3. What issues commercial organizations may have if they had to change licensing
agreements or any other practices;
4. What benefits could ICT and other industries may gain from the Global Repository, e.g.,
if they could ‘deposit’ software into the ‘software bank’ as soon as the demand for the
software is in decline.
5. What role could UNESCO play, as the heritage institute of the United Nations, play in
making the repository a reality?
Consultation Meeting: Technology Taskforce Breakout Session
Tuesday, April 21, 2015 9:00am-17:00pm
The agenda for the breakout session covers a range of issues:
–
–
–
–
Technical components and existing assets that could be used to support the
implementation of the Global Repository
Integration of the Global Repository with other preservation efforts, e.g., standardization
of document formats and preservation activities.
Legal and economic approaches that are compatible with the mission of the Global
Repository
Models and scope of engagement with industry, public sectors, academics, educators and
professional organizations.
Background information on relevant technologies
–
TOTEM (Documenting Technical Environments for Posterity), and the EU KEEP-project
(www.keep-project.eu) out of which this has developed. TOTEM strives to give access to
metadata describing the technical environments used to create or render digital objects.
–
PRONOM: a web-based technical registry to support digital preservation services,
developed by The National Archives of the United Kingdom
(http://apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/Default.aspx).
3
–
TREASURES (Technical Registry Enabling Access to Services Used in Research
EinfrastructureS).
–
The Digital Preservation Technical Registry, a project devised by National and State
Libraries of Australasia.
–
OLIVE: a collaborative project seeking to establish a robust ecosystem for long-term
preservation of software, games, and other executable content. Born at Carnegie Mellon
University, Olive addresses the current gap in preservation technology by providing a
curated environment for the preservation and distribution of executable content
(https://olivearchive.org/).
–
Preserving.exe: a report on a meeting (May 2013) on the possibility of devising a national
strategy for software preservation in the United States
(http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/documents/PreservingEXE_report_fina
l101813.pdf)
4
Annex I – Minutes of PERSIST Technology Task Force Meeting – March 2, 2015
Attendees
David Fricker (Chair)
Fred Van Kan (Deputy Chair)
Vincent Wintermans
Natasa Milic-Frayling
Ryder Kouba (Secretary)
Welcome and Introductions
David Ficker introduced Ryder Kouba, the new secretary of the PERSIST Task Force to the other
attendees.
Confirm Objectives of PERSIST
The main objectives of PERSIST remain the Global Repository for software so that files can be
rendered and data exploited from obsolete file formats. Current practices (like XML conversion)
are less efficient than preserving original software An important aspect of this will be industry
participation. Another project is the development of an Open Format Registry.
Role, Scope, and Inter-relationship of the three task forces.
It was agreed that the Technological task force is subsidiary to the Policy task force, due to the
fact that policies are the end goal of the overall project.
Global Repository
- The vision for the Global Repository is that it will contain software necessary for researchers to
render and exploit data from old digital files. Software will be deposited into an escrow account
until they are no longer commercially viable.
- Industry involvement will be necessary; four or five companies should cover most materials
held by heritage institutions.
- It will be important to sell industry on the benefits of contributing to the Global Repository. The
UNESCO name will be important, as well as showing tangible benefits (e.g. less migration
necessary for IT departments, public relations), while protecting commercial rights of businesses
will be paramount.
- Additionally, consumers have the right to use software they purchased; it may be possible to
re-negotiate with companies on rights to software that are no longer commercially valuable.
- There was a discussion of preserving content (both documents and social media) versus just
preserving software.
Similar Projects and Possible Other Members
- Several similar existing projects were mentioned:
5
o
o
Carnegie Mellon’s Olive Executable Archive (https://olivearchive.org/)
The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/software,
https://archive.org/details/vintagesoftware)
o TOTEM project at Portsmouth (http://keep-totem.co.uk/)
- Possible other members mentioned:
o Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
o Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
 Need to research appropriate individual member
o Brewster Kahle
o Mahadev Satyanarayanan
o Industry figures at a decision making (VP) level
 Vinton Cerf of Google
- The goal is to work towards a network of institutions
Planned activities for next meeting (April)
- Follow-up with contacts for April meeting, that meeting is to broaden the network
o Natasa: ACM, IEEE, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
o Invite Vinton Cerf
o Task force members should also come back with suggestions for invitees
- Pull together broad “concept of operation” model for repository
- A Business Task Force (or what task force is responsible for this aspect) was discussed and will
need to be determined.
6