Open source dose not save you in the long term. in 100 years there will be no PCs that can run Python or C++ and certainly no people who remember what C++ or Python.
The only solution is to periodically copy the data into the then current and popular format. File formats have a short life, measured in decades, not centuries. Think of a person born in 2022 and later in the 2080's he finds his grandfather photos all stored as RAW files. He does research and finds there was a technology called "PC" that used to be a small computer that was personally owned and these computers ran "operating systems". What is that? He does more research and finds that one OS was called "Windows" and another "Linux" and these OSes were written in something called a"programming language". and so on and so on. it will not be easy and it will take much work by experts to re-consturct 100 year old technology in 2122. Peole will not even understand the concepts. They will read about a "GPU" and no know why such a think was needed. No, it is not nuts tho think about the 22nd century. I have right here a photo takin in 1915. That has 106 years ago. I have some "open source" software I worked on in the 1970's. It is written in PL/1 and saved to 8-inch floppy disks. The system ran on a Z80 based computer and the CP/M operating system. This was cutting edge stuff. I have some other work on a Symbolics computer that was written in Lisp. In theory this could be restored then made to work but that will never happen. This is only 45 years old tech and already most people do not even know the names of what I just wrote. My prediction is that in 100 years we will have many 200 year old photos but very few 100 year old photos On Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pascal Obry <pas...@obry.net> wrote: > If this is true for commercial software it is not for free software. For > one thing, the code is open and anyone will be able to read old raw with > darktable or any free software. So please do not spread fear and unfounded > problems. > > Le ven. 31 déc. 2021 à 20:05, Chris Albertson <albertson.ch...@gmail.com> > a écrit : > >> This is a general note, something for developers and photographers to >> consider... >> >> What will be the fate of digital images stored in any non-destructive RAW >> image database like Darktable or even the old Apple Aperture or Adobe >> Lightroom? When my grandmother passed away we found 100+ year old photos >> in her house. There is no way on earth any software will support the RAW >> file format of 100-year-old cameras. When my yet-to-be-born >> grandkids sort through my house, my old Nikon NEF files will be useless and >> unreadable because no then-current software will know how to decode files >> from my late-20th century Nikon dSLR. Someplace I still have documents >> archived in MS-DOS Wordstar format, kind of the same issue, >> >> basically, the plan of keeping images in a camera-specific raw format is >> doomed. It is not if the plan will fail but only a matter of time. >> >> The solution is easy, convert to DMG format or even TIFF. Today it is >> in theory possible to support most obsolete cameras but this will get >> harder in years to come and impossible to 20 or 50 years. This post below >> about the old camera photos is the tip of a big iceberg that is coming. >> >> Testing and a large library of obsolete files is a way to slow the >> process but is unsustainable over a decades-long timescale. >> >> >> >> >> >> On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 6:25 PM Niranjan Rao <nhr...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> On ubuntu 20.04.3, darktable 3.8.0 >>> >>> >>> I upgraded day before yesterday and discovered that support for >>> Panasonic Lumix seems to be broken. These are old images and have been >>> sitting in database through various version upgrades. Now when I try to >>> open a file with extension RW2 (Model as reported by lighttable image >>> information is DMC-G2, darkroom is not able to open it. Lightroom shows >>> me the error message about please check if camera model that produced >>> image is supported.... >>> >>> >>> Images were already supported as they are tagged in my database and >>> showed up in the search based on tags. I've not seen this problem for >>> any other images I have. >>> >>> >>> What broke and more importantly how should I fix it? I don't mind >>> getting my hands dirty on terminal or writing shellscripts or fooling >>> around command line parameters if that's going to help to debug the >>> issue. >>> >>> >>> Happy to provide the sample if needed at sharable location. >>> >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> >>> Niranjan >>> >>> >>> ____________________________________________________________________________ >>> darktable user mailing list >>> to unsubscribe send a mail to >>> darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org >>> >>> >> >> -- >> >> Chris Albertson >> Redondo Beach, California >> >> ____________________________________________________________________________ >> darktable user mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to >> darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org >> > -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ____________________________________________________________________________ darktable user mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
