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Geocities closing-down October 26th

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BlueofRainbow

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May 30, 2006
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55
Not really a news in it-self as this was first announced a few months ago.

A recent reminder on FreeDOS raised the question about potentially archiving in some form the DOS related pages. At the very least, it was suggested to download ones favorite programs/utilities normally found there to a safe location in the event the original owner of a page has forgotten about it and does not migrate it to another server/services before doomsday.

Once in a while my DOS web-searches gets me to pages hosted on Geocities and most of these encounters resulted in a download of the program/utility found.

I'm not familier with many of the vintage computers. There may be a need to archive some of the most pertinent pages if it appears that the original owner may have forgotten of it (no update made in years?).
 
BlueofRainbow said:
Not really a news in it-self as this was first announced a few months ago.

A recent reminder on FreeDOS raised the question about potentially archiving in some form the DOS related pages. At the very least, it was suggested to download ones favorite programs/utilities normally found there to a safe location in the event the original owner of a page has forgotten about it and does not migrate it to another server/services before doomsday.

Once in a while my DOS web-searches gets me to pages hosted on Geocities and most of these encounters resulted in a download of the program/utility found.

I'm not familier with many of the vintage computers. There may be a need to archive some of the most pertinent pages if it appears that the original owner may have forgotten of it (no update made in years?).
Click to expand...

Something worth noting...in many cases (but not all of course), the Internet Archive has mirrored the pages (archive.org). Should you come across a link to a geocities page, you can punch it into the Archive and get a cached copy of the site.

Also, take note of filesearching.com and filewatcher.com
If the mirrored site copy doesn't include whatever file you're looking for, you can search many FTP servers using the above links and hopefully track it down.

Cheers
 
Fortunately none of my bookmarks are Geocities pages ... has anyone ever considered honestly attempting a one-spot stop for all vintage software components? (All the drivers, add-ons, reference disks, manuals, etc.)
 
To be honest, I think a lot of people have discussed it. It just becomes a hosting, money, management, and legal nightmare although you're right, it would be great to have a simple site like that.

That and all the information being so many places make it quite a feat to pull off. I think most of us would end up with "just another" site with incomplete info and archives. It's difficult becoming a successful public site these days.
 
I'd love to put something like that together, but have had a few cease and desist orders through the years for making what I considered either abandoned or public domain software available. Its too bad, I know if I had something that had outlived its profitable lifespan and someone was willing to archive it for me I would certainly be all for it, if for no other reason than to see my legacy live on.

-Lance
 
Ah, well, I was thinking more just small utilities and drivers. Anything formerly pay-ware of any sort probably ought to have an honest endeavor to check the legal status before posting. This may mean contacting a company (either the current company or the company who has since inherited the IP or whatever) and see how their legal department feels about it. If the company absolutely doesn't exist, there's probably no one left to enforce the copyright, though rarely do companies that had any success at all simply cease to be; the usually just wind up inside a bigger ball.

If the mythical site were to be, I'd probably recommend a database that can easily be searched by company name and have an attached status, e.g. "Clear" if it's been OK'ed by the company (and probably an attached verification letter/email would be very helpful), "Abandoned" if the company has ceased to be, "Unverified" if it has not yet been determined... something like that. Make it clear and visible that you are fully in compliance with copyright holders to take down content perhaps.

Obviously things like Windows and DOS versions should be totally avoided. Anything from Microsoft really :p, unless explicitly released as redistributable.

But yeah, I know something like that requires work of its people, and you get into hosting and maintenance costs and all that... and it's doubtful anyone can be absolutely 100% "complete", but you can try! If it's any help, I'd think that vintage computer users are a minority, so there's a good chance that hosting won't actually be too much a problem and you can probably get away with a cheap "unlimited" host. Just make sure to tag downloads with captchas and maybe impose a user account limit to keep any bots from downloading your entire cache.


... Just a thought, anyway. I always thought this site/forum ought to at least have something, like the Inboard software that was tricky to get ahold of.
 
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