I've been thinking a lot about this software archive idea we've been talking about, so thought I'd write up a little summary of what my thoughts are.
Proposal: A World Of Spectrum style semi-official archive for SAM software, housed on the web and built by the members of sam-users. Reasons: (1) So that warez style GoodSAMC collections are not needed (2) To prevent software getting lost as floppies continue to deteriorate over time (3) To allow people who didn't experience the SAM at its (erm) "peak" to enjoy it now (4) To allow us to get more use out of our SAMs by providing more software to run In practice: A three month period has been decided upon as a reasonable length of time to track down as many authors/copyright holders as possible - between us all, we should be able to cover the majority of the SAM back catalogue. For those first three months we would get the site established and start filling it with PD plus all software that permission has already been granted to distribute. After the three months, we put the rest of the software online that we have gained permission to release or that we can find no good reason to withhold (something we will discuss among ourselves on the list). Software is then provided in .dsk format, zipped up and placed on the web. Each software title will be posted with at least one screenshot and hopefully (over time) scans of any documentation it originally came with. There would also be links to previews/reviews/other press articles of the time. If at any time the author or copyright holder requests the software be removed, it will obviously be done so as soon as possible. In any case, permission to distribute software will always be continually sought. Where permission has been denied, the software will still be listed for historic purposes, but without a download link - the title will also be listed in a sort of blacklist, so that we know we are not free to copy it among ourselves. Finally, there will be a page on which we list software and/or authors and what stage we have got to in tracking down an author. For example: Nigel Kettlewell (Days Of Sorcery) - address found - letter sent - no reply as yet Martin Bell (Waterworks 1 + 2) - no contact details found Website: I've been looking for the cheapest options over the weekend and I think I may use Catalyst2 (http://www.catalyst2.com) which I've used before and found reliable. They have a �4.99 a month Linux hosting option, that gives us 500MB disk space and 5GB transfer - that should be enough to get us going. I'm happy to pay out of my own pocket initially, but it would be nice to sell a CD of the archive at the yearly show in Norwich, for a fiver for example - if we sold ten a year, we'd almost cover costs. At the end of the day, I'm not hugely fussed if I'm a little out of pocket, it's not a huge amount - and if we do happen to sell a load of CDs, I want to point out that the site is strictly non-profit making! I'll make sure all finance stuff is put on a page that we can access so everyone knows what is going on. Domain name: I'm hoping we can agree on a name between us all. IMHO, it should definitely be a .org as we are non-profit making and also "global" in nature. The three I suggest are samcoupe.org, samcommunity.org (yes, yes I know, but I've always thought it was a good name) or samusers.org/sam-users.org - they're all (currently) available. I'm really not sure, so I'm obviously open to all suggestions. I'd like it if we could have it chosen by this weekend though, so I can register it then. This all looks anal and pedantic but I wanted to lay it out like this because I know there are a couple of people who are very worried about this although they are now broadly on side - I don't think Colin will mind me saying that he was one of them and we really have talked for hours on this subject because I wanted to try and find away to have his support (if not his software!) I really think it's the lesser of two evils, as I've said before and would only help to keep the SAM alive, not do it damage. This is not anyone's pet project or anything of the sort - this is an archive of our software and our memories as well as providing a great place for someone to get to know the SAM - it's something we can build as a community and then be proud of! </rousing speech> Debate away, nothing is set in stone in the slightest but I hope the above is at least a good starting point. Gavin
