• Reported by Nate

The folks at the Internet Archive (remember "The Way Back Machine") are developing an archive of CD-ROMS and Software. It seems that they've kickstarted it thanks to a donation of titles from Macromedia, through materials made under the "Made-With-Macromedia" program (I was unable to determine under what conditions Macromedia actually obtained ownership to these titles). The archive itself appears to be very beta. Discussions are taking place about the best way to create and provide this archive, and others as they are donated, and they are talking with Apple about a potential donation.

I was a little perplexed to see that the info is currently being stored in a filemaker database, but my knowledge of filemaker shortcomings are all hearsay.

The concept seems very appealing, a whole subset of (heretofore unavailable) efforts and achievements collected in a searchable and downloadable resouce, with meta data and even reader reviews and ratings. But in reality, it could end up being a highly organized collection of things better off in the dumpster. It could collapse on it's anti-darwinian efforts by eventually being ignored past the point of even non-profit funding. But I think their efforts should be encouraged, the potential value greatly outweighs any risk of wasted effort.