Preserving old Emacs versions

Preserving old Emacs versions

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Hello,

I'm collecting old versions of Emacs for future preservation.  If anyone
is sitting on old archives or magnetic tapes, please send them to me!

What I have so far:

- 19.7-19.34.  Some are only diffs, which don't always apply cleanly.
- 18.41.  A modified 18.51.  Diffs for 18.52, 18.53, and 18.54.
  18.55, 18.57, 18.58, 18.59.
- 17.61.
- 16.56.

The raw data is stored here:
https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources

(I also have TECO EMACS, Gosling Emacs, Lucid Emacs, and XEmacs, but I
think that is out of the scope of this mailing list.)

Best regards,
Lars Brinkhoff

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org>
> Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 09:29:20 +0200
> 
> I'm collecting old versions of Emacs for future preservation.  If anyone
> is sitting on old archives or magnetic tapes, please send them to me!
> 
> What I have so far:
> 
> - 19.7-19.34.  Some are only diffs, which don't always apply cleanly.
> - 18.41.  A modified 18.51.  Diffs for 18.52, 18.53, and 18.54.
>   18.55, 18.57, 18.58, 18.59.
> - 17.61.
> - 16.56.

You didn't say what versions you need, or what is considered "old" for
this purpose.  E.g., what about 20.1 and later?

Thanks.

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> What I have so far:
>> 
>> - 19.7-19.34.  Some are only diffs, which don't always apply cleanly.
>> - 18.41.  A modified 18.51.  Diffs for 18.52, 18.53, and 18.54.
>>   18.55, 18.57, 18.58, 18.59.
>> - 17.61.
>> - 16.56.
>
> You didn't say what versions you need, or what is considered "old" for
> this purpose.  E.g., what about 20.1 and later?

I need everything! ;-)  I'd like every minor release, including
unreleased versions like 19.0-19.6.

RCS version history would be nice, but I think ESR got that, and it
wasn't that good for the early versions?

I think Emacs 20 and later are well covered by ftp.gnu.org.  (Plea to
FSF staff: please never throw anything away.)  So I consider Emacs 19
and earlier to be old.

RE: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Drew Adams]

> I'm collecting old versions of Emacs for future preservation.  If anyone
> is sitting on old archives or magnetic tapes, please send them to me!
> 
> What I have so far:
> 
> - 19.7-19.34.  Some are only diffs, which don't always apply cleanly.
> - 18.41.  A modified 18.51.  Diffs for 18.52, 18.53, and 18.54.
>   18.55, 18.57, 18.58, 18.59.
> - 17.61.
> - 16.56.
> 
> The raw data is stored here:
> https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources
> 
> (I also have TECO EMACS, Gosling Emacs, Lucid Emacs, and XEmacs, but I
> think that is out of the scope of this mailing list.)

Glad to see this!  Thx.

RE: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Drew Adams]

> (Plea to FSF staff: please never throw anything away.)

+1

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

We made backup tapes back then, but it is hard to read them
and I am not sure where they are now.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Paul Eggert]

On 10/19/2016 01:01 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> We made backup tapes back then, but it is hard to read them
> and I am not sure where they are now.

If you can find the tapes, I suggest contacting the Computer History 
Museum <http://www.computerhistory.org/>. If they are DECtapes there's a 
good chance they will still be readable, as that is a robust format. 
Even IBM 9-track tapes might be mostly readable. I wouldn't wait too 
long, as the tapes will continue to degrade.

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Lars Brinkhoff]

RMS wrote:
> We made backup tapes back then, but it is hard to read them and I am
> not sure where they are now.

I know of people that are good at reading all kinds of tapes.

I understand finding the tapes can't be a high priority.

Re: Preserving old Emacs versions

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I don't think we have the tapes any more.  Around 15 years ago
we gave them to someone who was going to read them for us.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.