[Info-vax] Decwindows Motif V1.1 kit

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-05-29 16:12:49 +0000, Paul Hardy said:

> Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> If you really want to preserve the software, update it to something 
>> approaching current Motif. That'll keep it around for a few more years.
>> 
> You are missing the point of the overall project, which is to preserve 
> for posterity, not just for a few years.

Ponder this from the other side.

Somebody that doesn't know how to debug a particular error or that has 
run into a block with a bug and needs help with it, but—as happens when 
folks cannot upgrade and for whatever reason—now we're back debugging 
the same bugs, and often bugs from decades ago, and quite commonly bugs 
long-since fixed.  Because available patches and updates and upgrades 
can't be applied, for whatever reason. Which means there are bugs that 
will outlive many of us.  The frustration-enhanced version of this are 
the folks that want or need "proof" that specific bugs are fixed with 
specific patches, which means debugging the same bugs over and over and 
over and over.  In detail.  These old bugs keep getting dragged back to 
the fore.  Because folks won't load patches.  For whatever reason. Or 
won't drag their apps forward, again for whatever reason.  Watching 
this sequence unfold anew might well be a new circle of a rather famous 
place.

The ability to keep these old bits and pieces supported and working and 
around is increasingly not the world we're living in, too.  Five or ten 
years for long-term support where offered, and gone.

> I’ve been extracting the source code to deposit for long-term archiving 
> with eg bitsavers.

archive.org has an ever-increasing archive of software and books and 
other materials, as well.

> I’d like an equivalent set of working binaries to show under SimH what 
> it looked like when running.

Emscripten of simh would be interesting, preferably without needing to 
download and boot Linux in the browser.  Given that OpenVMS is 
re-hosting onto LLVM-based compilers, this might well be possible with 
a custom build.  But I digress.

> Updating the source code defeats the object.

Because there are, what, a few dozen people that could tell the 
difference between the most current V1.6 of DECwindows—Motif is still 
part of the distro—or whatever is current on VAX—and what V1.1 looked 
like?

> I assert that 50 or a hundred years from now, people will look back and 
> berate us for not preserving the software from the early days of 
> computing to let future historians understand the evolution of modern 
> computer applications.

That's assuming that the folks in fifty or a hundred years have enough 
spare time and enough working equipment to be interested in the past, 
and—if they do—I suspect they'll be more generally unhappy with us and 
our decisions well beyond any software preservation efforts.

>> Yeah, I know there are folks that want to experience the era—an era of 
>> constrained and unstable hardware and software—and this is entirely 
>> your project.
> 
> I think you are unnecessarily hard on that era.

Yet here we are, debugging a DECwindows Motif bug.

ps: Given other recent discussions around developers and literacy and 
philosophy, I kan't resist mentioning that computers will undoubtedly 
feature prominently in any modern update to one of the more famous 
works of Dante Alighieri.




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