Rayleen,
Thank you so much! We're very happy that you will be joining us
on this pilot project to preserve NLS/Augment under the auspices
of the Computer History Museum. We all think that it is a
great
thing to ensure that the impact of Doug and his team's work
will
be more widely know and studied as a result of this project.
Peter Yim is setting up an on-line collaboration forum that we will
use to interact and work on the project. He will have that up
sometime next week, and we will transfer past email messages,
notes and slides to it at that point.
To bring you up to speed, I'm attaching a few slides that I
presented at the last monthly meeting of the Software Collection
Committee. This outlines our proposed activities and next
steps.
As you can see, the goal of this pilot project is to use the current
version of Augment as the subject, rather than any of the historical
versions. This is a pragmatic decision, and will be sufficient for
the
purposes of guiding the committee to formulate software collection
policies and procedures.
If you look at the near-term plan in the slides, you'll see that one
of the first items we will need to discuss with Doug is the logistics
of transferring a working copy of Augment to the CHM as a first
step in the collection process. I talked with Doug about this step
at length last November, and his only concern was ensuring that
personal accounts and files are not part of what is transferred.
Ken Harrenstein has proposed a way to create a "clean" clone
of Augment that ensures no personal accounts or files leave
Doug's machine. He is confident that this can be done reliably
and with no impact to the users of Doug's system. What it requires
is cloning and pruning on the same machine, then dumping an
image of the clone to a virtual tape, which excludes even deleted
or unused blocks. We can then move this image to a fresh
Linux machine at CHM and bring up a "clean" Augment
system.
Our primary concern throughout this process is that Doug feel
perfectly comfortable and confident that personal accounts and
files are not exposed or compromised. The delicate part is having
someone who Doug trusts supervise the process and be
responsible for pruning personal accounts and files. Ken is willing
to handle the mechanics, but is not an expert Augment user and
does not want to be responsible for this part.
I'm hoping that you would feel comfortable taking on the pruning
task before the clone leaves Doug's machine, assuming that Doug
himself doesn't have the time to do this. Let me know if this sounds
like a good plan and whether you'd be willing to do this part. Once
we have a complete plan and time frame in place, we can present
the details to Doug to make sure it meets with his approval. John
Toole is helping out with this project, and will also be contacting
Doug to assure him on behalf of the CHM that whatever we do will
be done with Doug's full approval.
Again, thanks for joining us on this project. We look forward to
working with you!
At 08:55 AM 2/23/2005, you wrote:
Philip,
I would be very pleased to assist you with this project.
Raylene
Philip Gust <gust@acm.org> wrote:
- Raylene,
- I hadn't heard back from you, so I'm forwarding my original
- email on the chance that it did not arrive the first time.
- >Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:17:38 -0800
- >To: Raylene Pak
- >From: Philip Gust
- >Subject: Computer History Museum project on NLS/Augment
- >
- >Raylene,
- >
- >It was nice to meet you at Doug's party a couple of weeks
ago.
- >Peter Yim, Jonathan Cheyer and I were talking with you about
a
- >project we're doing under the auspices of the Computer
History
- >Museum's Software Collection Committee. The committee's
- >charter is to develop a methodology for collecting,
conserving,
- >and presenting software, on parity with its existing efforts
with
- >hardware.
- >
- >As part of this effort, the committee has sanctioned several
test
- >bed projects to help understand the dimensions of the
problem.
- >One of my goals in joining the committee was to ensure that
- >NLS/Augment would be given the highest priority. The
committee
- >enthusiastically agreed, and selected it one of the pilot
projects.
- >Everyone on the committee knows of NLS/Augment and has the
- >highest regard for Doug, who was inducted as a CHS Fellow
- >several years ago.
- >
- >I am building a small team of very talented people who are
- >enthusiastic about NLS/Augment and want to make this pilot
- >project a success. Peter, Jonathan, and I are active members
- >of the team, and have also invited Ken Harrenstein to join
as
- >an active member. Our goal is to complete this pilot project
in
- >time to present our results to a workshop on collecting and
- >preserving software that will be sponsored by the CHM in
- >September 2005.
- >
- >We are also recruiting several advisory members who are
- >knowledgeable about various aspects of Augment and can
- >provide guidance and advice. A few candidates we are
- >contacting to become advisory members include Jake Feinler
- >(curator of the CHM Engelbart collection), Henry Lowood
- >(curator of the Stanford Engelbart collection), and Jeff
Rulifson
- >of Sun Microsystems.
- >
- >The group intends to work closely with Doug on this project,
- >and welcomes his involvement; we could hardly do it without
- >him! By the same token, we want to be very respectful of his
- >time and energy. The fact that we all know Doug and have
- >worked with him before in various ways should make it a very
- >comfortable experience for him.
- >
- >We hope that you will consider becoming an active member
- >of our group. Your expertise with the NLS/Augment system
- >would be invaluable to this project. Since we're all very
busy,
- >with constraints on our time, much of our work will be done
- >using on-line tools such as email, wikis, blogs, etc. We
don't
- >anticipate this project being a drain on anyone's time, and
it
- >promises to be both rewarding and fun.
- >
- >If you'd be interested in working with us, please let me
know
- >and I can bring you up to date on our progress and our
current
- >plans. We'd all look forward to working with you on it!
- >
- >Best regards,
- >
- >
- >Philip Gust
- >(650) 961-7992 (daytime)
- >(650) 367-7763 (evening)
- >gust@acm.org
- Philip Gust
- (650) 961-7992 (daytime)
- (650) 367-7763 (evening)
- gust@acm.org
Philip Gust
Nouveau Systems, Inc.
phone: +1 650 961-7992
fax: +1 508 526-8142
mailto: gust@NouveauSystems.com
CHS meeting report 2005.2.16.ppt
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