However, I do take your point that floppy disks have a limited lifespan, so we should try to make sure that everything is imaged and catalogued. Perhaps we could maintain a list of what images exist - not necessarily to release the images right now, but to make sure that everything will still be available, as and when we can agree on what is the right thing to do with it.
It's 2004, how many more years are we going to talk about it? :) My suggestion was that we have a consultation period (bit of a fancy term when referring to SAM software!) of about 4 weeks for each and every bit of software before we post the image online. If we can get the author's written permission in that time, great. If we can think of a reason not to post the image (or indeed if the author refuses permission), then obviously we don't.
Isn't that the lesser of two evils? One evil is to let the stuff rot away (we're the last few remaining who give a stuff about the SAM remember so let's not lose perspective), lost forever - the other evil is to go to reasonable lengths to gain permission, and failing that we post images that we think aren't too controversial. I really think it's the most sensible of the two.
I'll have something on the net before the weekend is out and we can debate it - it will give us something to talk about at least ;)
Gavin
