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The UK's V3 news site reports that the Vatican library considers open source file formats to be the only reliable way for humanity to preserve its history in the digital age.
Vatican Library CIO Luciano Ammenti said that, in order for the manuscripts to be readable, the Vatican Library opted for open source tools that do not require proprietary platforms, such as Microsoft Office, to be read.
"We save it as a picture as it's longer life than a file. You don't rely on PowerPoint or Word. In 50 years they can still just look at it," he said.
"Normally people try to use the TIFF format [when archiving]. This has several problems. It's not open source and it doesn't update. The last time was in 1998.
"On top of this it's 32-bit and not ready for 3D imaging, which limits the information it can preserve - what the script's made of etc. So instead we use the FITS format. FITS is open source, 64-bit, 3D ready and updated regularly. It gives all the information you need on the image."
What formats have you found best for archiving? Which have given you problems?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday May 08 2015, @03:35PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday May 08 2015, @05:17PM
My assumption is that if you are even considering the format you already have the program that reads it today. Maybe it was free, maybe it was purchased but you have it already.
The problem is that in some number of years the reader program will not run on current equipment. You may not have older equipment to run it on and you may have lost your copy anyway. Now you cannot read the file.
If it is well documented but patented.. well.. by that time the patent has run out anyway so if anybody still cares about the format they can/will write tools for reading it that work on the newer equipment. Of course.. if nobody cares enough to do that work.. then you are still out of luck. But.. the same could be said of non-patented formats. If nobody cares enough to write the new reader in the future you still have the same problem.
On the other hand.. A totaly closed format, which is protected by trade secret rather than by patent. Well.. good luck!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday May 08 2015, @06:43PM
You are leaving out the problem that writing a good reader program is a LOT harder than just reading a file. So it's much better to use a format that already has a good reader WHICH CAN BE MAINTAINED as hardware changes. And already I have files that I can only read on MSWind95, because later versions of the program can't read the files of the earlier versions, and the source is closed. It's true that those aren't open formats, but even if they were writing the reader would be more bother than just maintaining a old system...until I can't keep it running anymore. (For awhile I was planning to run an MSWind95 install on a virtual machine, but interest in the files has decreased to the point where that's no longer being planned. But they still need to be kept accessible...until they can't be.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday May 13 2015, @04:05PM
Ah, but I was replying to someone who posted about PATENTED formats. Patents are documentation. You aren't allowed to just go write your own implementation so long as the patent is active however the information you would need is there. Once the patent expires all it takes is to write code around the publicly available description. I would argue that an entirely patented format IS in fact open although it is not in the public domain until after the expiration of the patent.
The problem with that is that most closed formats aren't patented, they are TRADE SECRETS. As trade secrets their only protection is that the company simply doesn't tell anyone how to decode the format. The original source code is of course obfuscated by being compiled and is of course protected by COPYRIGHT anyway which lasts practically forever. The task of writing a reader for them becomes reverse engineering the format. This can be very difficult. If those formats were patented the patent would have basically served as a guide to writing the reader.
Now, in real life I don't think there are many patented file formats. Instead closed formats are mostly kept closed through trade secrets with maybe key parts being patented (such as long filenames in FAT). Those secret parts of the formats make readers very hard to write however that isn't what the GP said, the GP was about patents.
Now having said all that.. I'm not saying that patents are always a good thing. I do believe that in some areas technology is simply moving too fast for the length of time that patents are in effect to NOT be slowing progress down. This is especially true when you consider the 'patent pending' period. Also, there are far too many patents given out on things that are too obvious to deserve it or are simply 'do X that we have been doing for decades but now do it with a Y' (Y especially tends to be a computer). This I think is slowing down our technical progress as a species immensley! But... that has nothing to do with long term archival of information.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:30PM
Patents ought to be documentation, but in the few times I've looked at a patent it did not strike me as revealing enough to be useful.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.