Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

This is a cautionary tale for preservationists. My current preservation project is still not open because we are very slowly reviewing the code to make sure we don't accidentally include any IP when we open the source code. The real things that get you are similar to what happened here: codecs, graphics libraries, and a really big one to look out for is fonts. It'd be great if there was a scanner that could detect this stuff, but unfortunately, the scanning tools out there tend to go the other way like Black Duck: they detect open source code, not closed source.

Unpopular opinion: preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense.

Because what is the point if something is distributed in a restrictive license, can't be preserved and then gets lost to time? Also, licensing is to avoid distribution, modification or outright copying by competitors; preservation is completely orthogonal to those concerns. It is to avoid losing a piece of craft to the sands of time. There is no reason laws should have power over anything in perpetuity.

As seen in other spaces, pirates ignoring the "law" will provide the greatest service to humanity.

> There is no reason laws should have power over anything in perpetuity.

Laws are simply rules chosen and enforced by a given society. Having power over things is what they do. (Also, "in perpetuity" seems untrue, as all copyright expires eventually.)

You clearly disagree with the laws (and I'm inclined to support you there), but what is special about preservation that it should automatically override the will of society? Nearly all the combined work of humanity has been "lost to time," and society seems pretty okay with that.

> Nearly all the combined work of humanity has been "lost to time," and society seems pretty okay with that.

Pre-digital age, preserving the combined work of humanity was actually quite difficult. The cost to preserve everything outside of "obviously important" artifacts would've been preventative (or even impossible) for society as a whole.

I believe many (if not most) folks native to the digital age believe that digital artifacts should be preserved indefinitely by default - as the cost in doing so is comparatively trivial - and laws in democratic nations will catch up to that.

Hey I agree 100%. We live in a time and place where we could put about 10-Refridgerators-worth of computer and storage into the basement of every library in the world, and fill those drives with every book, painting, movie, song, etc... EVRYTHING all in one place, replicated around the world a million times over..

We could do this. The technology exists. But we, as humans, as a society and as a race of beings, have collectively decided that we will not do this: It doesn't make anyone any money.

For the first time in history, we could store all of human knowledge in a safe replicable way, world wide, for everyone. But we specifically choose not to do this.