[okfn-discuss] code.google.com closing down

Tue Mar 17 14:05:42 UTC 2015

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 02:47:28PM +0100, Friedrich Lindenberg wrote:
> Good digital archiving is a huge challenge, but I think claiming that every
> project stored on Google Code is now entirely Google's problem isn't
> reasonable and won't get this solved.

well. but burning books^W^Wdeleting code is neither reasonable. when google
startet hosting this, it took responsibility without having a contingency
plan. now we have this too-big-to-fail situation, where loads of important and
abandonded projects are hosted on google. and they will be lost if noone
preserves that knowledge and work.

> It's true that zipping each project up and pushing it onto archive.org is a
> simple thing to do,

not quite. i do mirror a few csv and svn repos myself, and it's very messy.
you still remember csv? wow, so much lameness.

> and I'd be surprised if Google didn't end up doing something along these
> lines.

show me, prove me wrong, make me happy.

> Beyond that, I don't think that we should pretend there's a legitimate
> expectation for infinite free service (e.g. git/svn servers, working
> wikis). Maintaining F/OSS projects is real work, and Google shouldn't do it
> for us.

agreed, but if you do, you need a contingency plan, for what happens with the
data when you go bankrupt, when you get bought by some competitor, when you
get bought by the mafia, or when you simply loose interest.

> Let's not forget that OKFN's own track record on this is probably not ideal
> either - KForge was shut down without a very comprehensive archival plan...

okfn also burning books? how ironic, unsurprising and sad.

-- 
otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt