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STACKTRACE // News from Software Preservation Network
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December 2022
Volume 5, Issue 2
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Learn about current SPN-wide efforts — activities that crosscut working groups and affiliated projects.
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Supporting Software Preservation Services in Research and Memory Organizations
In November, SPN’s Research-in-Practice Working Group published a report with findings from its survey and interview-based study of software preservation service providers. This is the culmination of several years of research and analysis by the working group – we are very excited to be sharing it with the SPN community! In addition to identifying skill sets, barriers, and future directions related to software preservation work, the report includes thirteen recommendations for broadening representation in the field, defining the field, networking and community building, informal and formal learning, and implementing shared infrastructures and model practices.
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Software Recommended Format Guide Continued Work
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After releasing the Software Metadata Recommended Formats (SMRF) Guide in February 2022, the Metadata Working Group (MWG) has spent the past few months immersed in research projects that will inform future iterations of the Guide.
Following SMRF's publication, the MWG conducted our annual Action Planning Workshop and began researching controlled vocabularies for system requirements. This research took the form of deep-dives into existing software collection, preservation, and management initiatives that attempted to unearth applicable software metadata clues. It also included conversations with stakeholders from the Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) program of work and the GAme MEtadata and CItation Project (GAMECIP) initiative, where we discussed goals, challenges, and discoveries they've encountered in their work.
The MWG is currently taking a break from controlled vocabulary research and shifting our attention to revisit SMRF and consider possible directions for revision. Taking inspiration from the July SPN Community Call’s exploration of the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation and DLF Levels of Born-Digital Access, the group is considering how SMRF might reflect more targeted metadata requirements based on specific use cases. We're excited to see where this research takes us!
As we pursue a SMRF revision, group members are presenting about SMRF at their institutions and at conferences, including iPRES this past September and NDSA Digital Preservation in October. If you are intrigued by SMRF or have used it in your work, we'd love to hear how it has worked (or not worked!) for you!
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The Law & Policy Working Group created two new resources for the SPN community on fair use (United States) and fair dealing (Canada): Section 108 and Software Collections: A User’s Guide and Section 30.1 and Software Collections: A User’s Guide. These guides explain how to provide access to software using library exceptions alongside fair use and fair dealing. We partnered with the Association of Research Libraries and Canadian Association of Research Libraries to present a webinar for folks to learn more about these resources. Check out the recording here!
The Law & Policy Working Group also released a revised Preservationist’s Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation. Prepared by the Harvard Cyberlaw clinic, the guide covers new DMCA rules in effect through 2024. This guide is intended to help preservationists determine whether their activities fall under the new exemptions for software and video game preservation.
SPN’s Technological Infrastructure Working Group (TechInfra) is currently working on the creation of an introductory online resource for emulation as a preservation method. The resource will be hosted on Gitbook, a wiki-like knowledge base platform that allows for easy collaboration and editing. TechInfra hopes to provide information regarding emulator configuration and setup, workflows for accessing objects through emulation, and an extensive glossary of terms and definitions. The group was also recently awarded a publication contract through CLIR’s Pocket Burgundy series to write An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method, which will summarize and link to the larger online resource. TechInfra is hoping to publish the online resource at some point in mid-2023, with the publication following in early 2024.
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The Year in Copyright for Software Preservation
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2022 was a busy year for copyright generally, with some new rules and big cases making news in the copyright universe. We spent our first full year living with new DMCA rules which permit libraries, archives, and museums to provide remote access to non-video game software for research (under defined circumstances). The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s challenge to the DMCA in Green v. DOJ was heard in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where we await a decision as to whether the DMCA violates the First Amendment. Finally, a bill was introduced to add a permanent exemption to the DMCA to allow repair of electronic devices. Unfortunately it didn’t move forward, but the “right to repair” movement and its allies are sure to keep the idea alive in the next session.
In non-DMCA happenings, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Warhol v. Goldsmith, its second major fair use case in less than five years. While it’s unlikely the court will make major changes to fair use so soon after its own decision in Google v. Oracle, we should still cross our fingers while we await the opinion. The final big fair use case of 2022 is Apple v. Corellium, which addresses the application of fair use to emulated software access, an issue very close to SPN’s heart. SPN led a coalition of library groups that filed an amicus brief in the case in February, and we still await the appellate court’s opinion.
In agency news, earlier this year the US Copyright Office embarked on a study of the current legal requirement that anyone who registers a copyright with the Office should deposit a copy of the work in its “best edition” to the Library of Congress. Copyright holders have complained in the past that this requirement is onerous and have sought to soften or eliminate the requirement. As we explained in our comments (filed with the Library Copyright Alliance), the deposit requirement has enabled the creation of a world-class library and an incredible record of the creative and cultural history of the United States (and the world) and should not be watered down or eliminated. Happily, the Office’s final report back to Sen. Tillis agrees with us, finding that rightsholders’ logistical concerns can be addressed by updating technology without changing the law.
With so many decisions waiting in the wings, and another round of DMCA rulemaking to crank up, 2023 is sure to be an exciting year for copyright and SPN!
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A Message from SPN'S Implementation Sponsor, Interlisp.org
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We have made considerable progress on the Interlisp software preservation project, and we want to offer tours and collaboration for those engaged in similar or related software preservation efforts. Interlisp was an early and unique software development environment (IDE) developed in the 1970’s and 1980’s at Xerox PARC, and a testbed for novel software development tools. The Medley version of Interlisp-D was built as a portable Virtual Machine, which has allowed us to bring the system forward to run on a wide variety of modern hardware and operating systems. Interlisp was also an environment that supported many novel applications, especially in Artificial Intelligence of the 1980s.
We are approaching the project as a general software-preservation-through-emulation project, starting with source code. While a "strict emulation" mode is possible, we’ve been focusing on an updated version that fixes some of the compatibility problems with modern hardware (keyboards, mice, etc.) and implements more modern modes of user interaction. Advances over the last year include:
- New versions of "online.interlisp.org" which give users a virtual "lisp machine" accessed through the browser without any software to install.
- New versions of an open source emulator and VM images with numerous improvements.
- Support for virtual networking of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) protocol stack (pre-dating TCP/IP, as well as the "PUP" (PARC Universal Packets).
- Further work reviving classic Interlisp applications, including Rooms (desktop management), Notecards (Hypertext from the 80s, well before the Web), LOOPS (Lisp Object Oriented Programming System), melding Smalltalk style object inheritance with class-based knowledge engineering tools.
- Continued integration of Common Lisp standard features with Interlisp development tools.
- A large Zotero library of referenced texts, papers, documents, and presentations.
- A new expanded Interlisp.Org website that documents the project, software history, goals, contributors, and other components.
- Additional development of GitHub Interlisp organization and repositories that provide a record of issues, changes, bugs, and fixes.
We meet weekly to discuss open issues and other agenda items. Meetings are recorded. We would like to talk to others who might be interested in collaboration or using our components for other emulation projects. You can contact us at in...@interlisp.org.
Learn more about SPN's sponsorship program and become a sponsor today!
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This summer SPN hosted a community forum on Building a Video Game Collection: Legal Considerations for Preservation, which generated so much interest and interesting conversation, we invited everyone back in to talk about it more at our Fall Forum, Building a Video Game Collection Community Q&A. Both forums were recorded, so if you missed them – or want to relive the awesome conversation – check out the links above.
If you are interested in discussing a specific topic during future Community Forums, submit your topics and questions via our Google form.
SPN Movie Club took over the November SPN Community Call with a presentation by Ethan Gates and Claire Fox from Yale University Library. Call participants watched a video from a YouTube user called the Macintosh Librarian, titled "Emulate a Classic Macintosh Today! Basilisk II Tutorial!". In this video, the Macintosh Librarian and her trusty sidekick Maccy (an anthropomorphized Macintosh SE/30) guides viewers through the process of configuring a Basilisk II emulator to run software compatible with the Macintosh System 7 operating system. After the video wrapped, call participants launched their own Basilisk II emulators (thanks to pre-configured packages created – for Windows and Mac! – by Ethan ahead of the call) and competed for the highest score in GLIDER 4, a 1991 video game where players fly a paper plane through obstacles in different rooms of a house. Phil Salvador of the Video Game History Foundation holds the current SPN high score of 29,910, with other SPN members close behind!
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Learn about SPN affiliated project activities and milestones. SPN affiliated projects focus on specific aspects of software preservation/curation that support the strategic goals of SPN.
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It was a big year of transition for the SPN-affiliated EaaSI program of work. Much of the first half of 2022 revolved around (successfully!) securing a third round of funding from the Mellon and Sloan foundations. We’re grateful to Mellon, Sloan, and Yale for resourcing EaaSI through, at a minimum, mid-2024; the next two years will be dedicated to implementing a sustainable service model that keeps EaaSI tools and support rolling long past this grant-funded period. And in the meantime, we look forward to continuing to provide partners with hosted infrastructure, create documentation and training resources, and improve the EaaSI platform to ensure our work, and emulation services across the board, address real-life use cases!
So it’s with equally excited and heavy hearts that we also had to say goodbye to our Program Manager, Seth Anderson, this past November. EaaSI never would have gotten this far without Seth’s leadership, but his vision will continue to be felt in our Phase 3 goals, and we’re so happy for the opportunities that await him ahead as a Senior Consultant for AVP! And don’t worry – he’s assured us that he will continue contributing to SPN.
The past few months also saw our Metadata Analyst, Claire Fox, shift gears from the EaaSI program team to a new, permanent role at Yale as a Digital Preservation Librarian, helping bring emulation and EaaSI services into day-to-day digital preservation and access workflows across the Yale Library system. Congrats to her as well! We are fortunate that neither Seth nor Claire will be going very far at all.
There’s lots else to celebrate: new training modules, a new program website, conference papers, significant milestones in our emulated environment creation and Wikidata contributions, and more. You can get a detailed rundown in our post from this past World Digital Preservation Day! In the meantime, we’ll end this year’s roundup with a message of gratitude for those who have brought EaaSI to this point – including the entire SPN community – and for the great possibilities ahead.
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Prof Melanie Swalwell is leading a team for a new ARC LIEF (Australian Research Council – Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities) funded project 2022-2024 which aims to conserve and render born digital artifacts widely accessible by establishing an Australian Emulation Network. This AusEaaSI is using an installation similar to the SPN EaaSI Hosted Node project, and is managed by AARNet, the Australian Academic Research Network. High value cultural collections from university archives and the GLAM sector requiring legacy computer environments will be targeted. The project expects to generate new knowledge across media arts, design, and architecture. Expected outcomes include stabilizing and providing researchers with emulated access to born digital cultural artifacts, sharing legacy computer environments across the network, and establishing an Australian software preservation community of practice, building skills in preserving and emulating digital cultural artifacts with substantial future applications also in scientific preservation.
For more information, see Prof Swalwell’s paper “The Australian Emulation Network: Accessing Born Digital Cultural Collections" developed at this year's International Symposium on Electronic Art, 2nd Summit on New Media Art Archiving. To see AusEaaSI in action, check out “Making legacy videogames and interactive artworks playable with EaaSI” from ACMI (formerly Australian Centre for the Moving Image).
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The Software Preservation Network (SPN) is a leading organization established to advance software preservation through collective action. SPN preserves software through its Affiliated Projects, Strategic Partnerships and member engagement across five core activity areas including Community Engagement, Law & Policy, Metadata, Research-in-Practice, and Technological Infrastructure.
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Do you appreciate the work that SPN has been doing over the last several years to ignite software preservation efforts and ensure lawful preservation, sharing, and reuse of software? Would you like SPN to continue its work of coordination, research, advocacy, and capacity building? Do you have ideas or a vision for the future of software preservation that you would like to see realized through the SPN community?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then consider supporting our work through membership, sponsorship, or volunteering. To learn more about the benefits of membership and sponsorship, visit: https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/get-involved/. To join, please download, complete, and submit your SPN Participation Agreement to <jess.f...@educopia.org>.
Or consider volunteering for our Metadata, Law & Policy, Research-in-Practice, Technological Infrastructure, or Community Engagement Collaborative Working Groups. You do not need to be a SPN member to join a working group! To join a Working Group, fill out a new volunteer form. To join a Working Group, fill out the new volunteer form.
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