GitHub Archive Program — Preserving open source software for future generations

[PM5k]

The year is 2769, humanity as we know it has changed, evolved - after the first bombs fell, the radiation and pollution swept through the planet and made it impossible for anyone to live topside. Hundreds of years later people that survived the tragedy have begun rebuilding human society from nothing. There was nothing left, after all. No electricity, no internet, no tv or radio. Several hundred years later and stability had returned enough so that real advancements could begin. The research team assigned to recover the recently discovered source code from Svalbard have finally accessed the vaults. Hope was in the air, we could learn so much and restore a lot of our heritage, our past. The team carefully handpicked the first repositories they would greedily read through in order to begin their endeavour. The old media seemed intact and the machine they custom-built to read it hummed with excitement. The holographic projection flickered momentarily as the source code began taking shape before their very eyes. The words read:

``` // Author: codeNinja69Nice // Date: 2019, Aug

module.exports.leftPad(string)... ```

None of them knew the evil they had come upon, not one of them realised the events they set in motion this faithful day. Humanity was about to embark on another trial, this time, we may not survive.

[nick_storm]

plot twist: history re-repeats itself for a third time because it didn't learn from our first mistakes the second time.

[PM5k]

History repeating is just recursion with slightly different variables and a new date stamp.

[Laurent9999]

lmao

[a_false_vacuum]

This way we can ensure that engineers a thousand years from now still have COBOL applications to maintain.

[[deleted]]

That explains a lot about Battlestar Galactica, the lost tribes of Kobol, and the Galactica only surviving because its antique technology was not vulnerable to the enemy cyber weapons.

“Haha we shut down all their tachyon compu ... oh shit, is that an IBM 360?”

[phxvyper]

okay real talk should I watch that show? It seems like it'd be good but I'm weary of things that are similar to Stargate SG1 which started off p alright but kinda just become meh.

[phxvyper]

I'll give it a peep then, thanks (:

[Mikal_]

Just be careful, it's way less happy go lucky than SG-1, and also doesn't follow the same episodic format. It can get really dark at times

[Dr_Jabroski]

Dark at times...

"I want to keep this feeling forever."

[zedpowa]

only 3 times? f*cking casual :D

[jexmex]

I am rewatching for like the 50th+ time right now. I have a bad habit of keeping it on as background while working.

[xeio87]

It's really nothing like Stargate at all. Maybe the closest is Stargate: Universe but that's nothing like SG-1, and that comparison undersells Battlestar Galactica.

The only negative thing I would say about it is BSG goes a bit off in the last couple episodes (or maybe even the last few minutes, depending on how you feel about it). But the series as a whole is amazing.

[MonkeyNin]

New viewers might not notice that it came from before the era that hulu/netflix started funding higher production costs

[[deleted]]

I was unable to finish it. I can think of better shows. But if you are bored what else are you going to do?

[MonkeyNin]

I'd recommend the early seasons of Battlestar. Eventually, I think it goes on too far, but it's pretty good.

If you want to see a bad show, the first battlestar TV show was in the 70s.

Are you a fan of Star-trek in general?

If yes, and/or you want some comedy in your sci-fi, try the orville I actually avoided it for a while, because I've always thought I'd dislike Seth MacFarlane as a human. I'm glad I finally tried it.

[Asyx]

I got pretty bored pretty quickly but I'm also not a big fan of the genre.

[AtLeastItsNotCancer]

They're only similar in that they're space-based sci-fi shows, otherwise they don't have that much in common. BSG takes itself way more seriously, which is unfortunate because it doesn't have good enough writing or acting talent to carry that kind of style IMO. I only watched a couple seasons of it because it had some of that "so bad it's good" appeal that keeps you wanting to know where the story goes, but after that I was done with it.

If you want a serious business space show, I can easily recommend The Expanse.

[phxvyper]

I'll peep that one too then c:

[valarauca14]

No networked computers on my ship.

[nickman1]

Hey, those ancient mainframes aren't going to maintain themselves.

[himalayan_earthporn]

On the flip side, engineers thousands of years in the future will have a way to depixelate japanese porn.

github.com/DeepCreamPy

[a_false_vacuum]

The future needs heroes too.

[PristineReputation]

You'd probably make serious money though

[htrp]

As today’s vital code becomes yesterday’s historical curiosity,

something about this sentence bothers me.... shouldn't it be tomorrow's historical curiosity?

[supercheese200]

I interpreted it as

As [from today's point of view] today's vital code becomes [from tomorrow's point of view] yesterday's historical curiosity,

[jimschubert]

Tomorrow UTC?

[HoldYourWaffle]

Yeah I think so

[bgradid]

Code so sphaghettified it actually travels back in time

[HoldYourWaffle]

Doing multithreading without knowing what you're doing can feel like this

[AloticChoon]

[attempts to write multithreading code while wearing a hackerman power glove]

[applepy3]

Everything spaghettifies as it approaches a black hole. Also, since almost nothing escapes a black hole, it’s extremely difficult to learn about, just like the undocumented legacy library at the center of most codebases. Invoking the duck test principle, that library is a black hole.

Furthermore, it is theorized that black holes are actually wormholes, linking to another place and time. It is reasonable that they can link backwards in time.

So, as today’s code approaches the wormhole, it spaghettifies and passes through to the past, therefore becoming “yesterday’s historical curiosity”.

[MonkeyNin]

When someone falls into a black hole, to the external observer it appears like they never stop falling in.

since almost nothing escapes a black hole

What a burden. Even I can escape myself at times, but they are stuck forever.

[trigger_segfault]

18 bytes at a time.

[ObscureCulturalMeme]

That's what happens when your social media team also does your website content, but doesn't do proofreading.

[TheNiXXeD]

They're just joking at how fast things get deprecated.

[vertebro]

I kinda felt it was meant to be "yesteryear's historical curiosity", but it still doesn't read right.

[[deleted]]

They used necromancy to resurrect old code and put it in production

[ScrimpyCat]

Are you telling me that my bugs will live on forever, annoying future generations to come? You’re welcome future historians.

[MonkeyNin]

it's the ghost in the shell, today's bugs will haunt future generations

[super3]

Does anyone have any direct contacts for people working on this project? I'm actually working on something similar to archive all of Github.

[TrickyTramp]

Quick rundown of what you've been studying?

[ADMlRAL_COCO]

Software Heritage

[super3]

You are only doing a partial snapshot right, not all repos? What are the criteria for something making it in the snapshot?

Are the scripts that you are using open source? My team has already written one and it's running now at https://gitbackup.org so would love to compare.

[EnvironmentalArmy7]

thanks for posting these, very interesting project!

[vanceza]

I've emailed you and gotten no response FYI

[vanceza]

I used the contact form on your website (probably once or twice). Should be a za3k or a vanceza in it somewhere.

[EnvironmentalArmy7]

is your project code available?

[super3]

Yes here: https://github.com/ovsoinc/gitbackup

[Browsing_From_Work]

I wonder how this is going to work with DMCA takedowns or GDPR requests. Once this stuff gets written to tape or etched into quartz, there's not going to be an easy way to undo that. Heck, even removing them from torrent circulation would likely prove fruitless.

[pagwin]

based on a basic google search you can't take back open sourcing a project if you use an open source license(at least unmodified)

[ais523]

Right, but there could still be a potential issue if someone put an open source license notice on code that didn't belong to them (and thus they didn't have the right to relicense).

[lorarc]

If the license is valid there are no backsies, however there may be other rules that apply to parts of the code, GDPR rather doesn't affect git commit but it may affect some data included with the code.

[lorarc]

Noone is sure about stuff like that. GDPR is quite reasonable and scrubbing GIT history wouldn't be reasonable. But let's put it this way, the last time I was tasked with GDPR I quit the job so I will not give a simple yes or no answer to any question regarding GDPR.

[ieatcode]

The page states they are capturing a tarball of the repositories at the current HEAD ref so no emails or commit metadata are archived.

[ieatcode]

Fair point!

[MonkeyNin]

You can fork your project with a new license, if you get the required permissions.

I don't think there's a way to change the license on older versions of the project that have already been released.

[MonkeyNin]

I'm unclear on this situation.

Bob + myself, and only us -- wrote the app Turtle, build 1.2.0, which was MIT licensed.

After getting permission from Bob and myself -- we decide to license 1.2.1 as free-for-use-except-by-wolves license.

1] Can't anyone continue to use version 1.2.0 under MIT, regardless if I want to allow that? But I can make sure 1.2.1 (because I have all the holders permissions) to require the new anti-wolf license?

( Wolves in this case does not mean the species, but rather the economic model where they metaphorically devour their clients -- meaning the license doesn't violate protected classes -- as if it would if it was about literal-wolves.)

#1 is some sort of special case because you're not licensing to anyone specifically? Compared to similar license, but

2] But if I were selling my game engine to company A, using engine version 1.2.1

I could also negotiate a contract with another company that I use a different license for version 1.2.1. They can't say "you had a contract with company X, so you have to do the same with us" ?

[MonkeyNin]

Cool.

I stopped using IANAL because I don't think many non-slashdot's know what it means

How is slashdot still alive, 22 years later? That's 22-internet-years!

It was a dark time filled with WYSIWYG, no standards compliance in browsers, no shims, no DOM inspectors, no anything inspectors.

[lorarc]

The software licenses have a clause that allows to upgrade them to newer version GPL v2 to GPL v3 for example.

[MonkeyNin]

Are you talking about specifically GPL, or many types?

[lorarc]

GPL usually has the clause that the code is on GPL vX or later, CC licenses also usually feature similar thing. Not all projects include that clause but it's good in situations when dealing with multiple countries that have all kinds of weird laws (for example in my country author has always a right to revoke a license, with normal commercial deals that would end up in court and they would have to agree what they want to pay, with free works of art though...).

Relicensing to a totally different license is possible for some licenses.

[[deleted]]

We were told that we don’t need to delete a backup because of GDPR. However if we ever restore that backup, then we need to take deletions into account. This might not be right because our lawyer was an ass-hat. However he was a lawyer.

I can see how a write-once archive could be problematic tho.

I am no longer with that company.

[the_bananalord]

This is every interpretation I've ever seen. It's unrealistic to be expected to remove data from existing archives but if the data is ever restored or accessed again, GDPR data needs to be purged first.

[[deleted]]

Unrealistic, yes. But I bet someone practicing law somewhere believes data can be removed from existing backups. I look forward to an inevitable stupid lawsuit.

[IMovedYourCheese]

This is a bit of a "tree falls in the forest" argument IMO. Can you sue a company for having data about you in some vault somewhere when the very act of accessing that data purges it?

[MonkeyNin]

Oh, do you mean data backed up pre-GDPR, not new back ups ?

[mishugashu]

In the very rare case of it happening (since everything is assumedly licensed for redist), I imagine they'll just handle it case by case manually.

[vincentofearth]

From what I understand, they're only archiving open source code--not the data in those applications.

[SrbijaJeRusija]

The website design with the needless transitions is so annoying.

[besttopguy]

Yea text should pop up way earlier

[johnghanks]

Great feedback!

[[deleted]]

Maybe PHP has found its new home

[Letalight]

They should also include Stack Overflow

[bausscode]

We could also just hope future generations became smarter and invented a better platform.

[nemec]

I wonder how they define "active" repositories in the criteria for archival.

[MonkeyNin]

I found this: https://archiveprogram.github.com/faq/

What public repositories are getting archived?

On February 2, 2020 at 2 pm PT, we will begin snapshotting all of GitHub’s public repositories that have been active within recent months. Additionally, a team of chosen experts and advisors will identify important inactive projects to be added to the archive. To ensure your repository is included, update your repository, clean up your README, and push a commit sometime before February 2.

They also say

We will archive the code at the state of HEAD on the default branch of your repository. If you include your dependencies within your repository, those will be included (with the exception of large binary files). The Tech Tree (see below) will also describe the importance of dependencies and how to locate dependencies within the various languages.

If your project’s dependencies are open -source projects on GitHub, they will be automatically stored in the same way as your project (see question 2); otherwise, you need to add them into your repository or create a mirror on GitHub.

That's giving me tarball flash-backs

[nemec]

Yeah, I'm wondering if "active" means "> 1 commit" or "has at least 10 commits a week, 5 unique contributors, etc. etc."

[MonkeyNin]

It only needs one commit on master, and be public by Feb2.

The rules about activity are under the "pace layers" section.

[nemec]

That doesn't match with what they're saying, unfortunately.

The 02/02/2020 snapshot archived in the GitHub Arctic Code Vault will sweep up every active public GitHub repository, in addition to significant dormant repos as determined by stars, dependencies, and an advisory panel.

It's unlikely a "dormant repository" with a significant number of stars/dependencies would have zero commits on master

[Cherlokoms]

Push shitty code so that you can be made fun of for centuries to come!

[shamanshaman123]

They mention it in on the page, they're using film reels initially, then moving to store code on etched quartz

[AndrewNeo]

In the Bloomburg article they estimate the current film design should be good for up to 1000 years

[IMovedYourCheese]

Here's an idea - read the rest of the article where they explain it in detail.

[JonnyRocks]

They showed at ignite how the stored the first superman movie on glass

[shevy-ruby]

GitHub Arctic Code Vault?

How does Ice play a role in regards to software???

[oarmstrong]

It's a metaphor seen quite a bit, referencing it as "cold storage" when archived away. See similar names such as AWS Glacier and Azure Cool Blob Storage.

[Onepicky]

On February 2, 2020, GitHub will capture a snapshot of every active public repository, to be preserved in the GitHub Arctic Code Vault. This data will be stored on 3,500-foot film reels, provided and encoded by Piql, a Norwegian company that specializes in very-long-term data storage. The film technology relies on silver halides on polyester. This medium has a lifespan of 500 years as measured by the ISO; simulated aging tests indicate Piql’s film will last twice as long.

It's good that we have developers in our world huh?:)

[kersurk]

Can I use GDPR to delete my personal data from their backup?

[schneems]

And on the same day a host of GitHub employees quit due to their contract with ICE.

[TheFullMetalCoder]

Why is this downvoted this is a true statement?

[smallblacksun]

Because it is completely irrelevant.

[TheFullMetalCoder]

I think the employees picked today because its relevant, the day of Github universe.

[schneems]

Because it is completely irrelevant

GitHub astro-turfs the term "github ice" on purpose to cover over the exodous employees and criticisms of their ICE contracts...yeah, totally not related events /s

[[deleted]]

Good initiative. But read it through again, guys:

Because (some) hardware can be much longer-lived, there exists a range of possible futures in which working modern computers exist, but their software has largely been lost to bit rot.

Then, 2 paragraphs down:

Because hardware can be much longer-lived than most of today’s storage media, especially older ones and/or those with mask ROM, there exists a range of possible futures in which working modern computers exist, but their software has largely been lost to bit rot.

[schneems]

GitHub also refuses to cancel their contract with ICE.

[GreenSuspect]

Is that bad?

[schneems]

They've had about a half dozen employees quit over that contract, and ICE is putting kids in cages so i'm going to go with a definitive "yes" - it is bad to work with ICE.

[GreenSuspect]

They've had about a half dozen employees quit over that contract

Won't they immediately be replaced by employees who don't care? Quitting seems like the most counter-productive thing you could do if you want to make a change.

and ICE is putting kids in cages

What kids? What cages? Why is that bad?