The secrets of Australia’s unique biodiversity and the history of our national library are among the digital treasures kept in an arch 250 meters underground in an abandoned Norwegian coal mine.
The GitHub Arctic Vault program is part of the code repository now owned by Microsoft, GitHub, where programmers can share code with others to check for bugs or for them to implement into their own programs.
The safe aims to preserve information for future generations.
“The Arctic Code Vault was just the beginning of the GitHub archive program’s adventure to secure the world’s open source code,” said Thomas Dohmke, vice president of special projects for GitHub at news.com. at.
“We have partnered with several organizations and advisers to help us maximize the value of the GitHub archiving program and preserve all open source software for future generations.”
One of these partners is Piql, a Norwegian archival expert specializing in very long-term data storage.
The company uses around 200 reels of silver halide and polyester film designed to last a thousand years to store information on a Norwegian island called Svalbard.
“We have chosen to store GitHub public repositories in the World Arctic Archives at Svalbard because it is one of the most distant and geopolitically stable places on Earth and about a mile down the road from famous Global Seed Vault, “said Dohmke.
The Global Seed Vault contains a variety of plant seeds duplicated from other gene banks around the world to protect them from regional or global crises (including political unrest and natural disasters).
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Dohmke said that the open source code in particular deserves to be preserved.
“Today, almost all software is based on open source. It is the lifeblood of the Internet, but much of the world’s data is ephemeral, stored on storage media that should only survive a few decades, “he said.
“As the home of all developers, GitHub occupies a unique position and we believe it has a responsibility to protect and preserve the collaborative work of millions of developers around the world.
“Ultimately, it is time to create several lasting backups of the software on which our world depends.”
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Of course, the code is not very good without a computer to run it.
To this end, GitHub has created a guide to provide “the context and direction of the content of each archive”.
“The guide provides an overview of what software is, an explanation of open source and its philosophy, as well as a technical overview of how to decompress the contents of the archive” to help future generations to understand it, said Dohmke.
Some of the coded gems that are now in the abandoned coal mine include the Atlas of Living Australia, an open access database containing information on Australian biodiversity hosted by CSIRO.
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The National Library of Australia and OpenAustralia “pirate of democracy” code is also in the safe.
Other treasures include the original source code for MS-DOS (the forerunner of Microsoft Windows), the open source code that powers Bitcoin, Facebook reacts and the WordPress publishing platform.