Reviving Antique Software: Curation Challenges and the Olive Archive

Abstract

A growing percentage of the world's intellectual output is in the form of executable content, such as simulation models, tutoring systems, data visualization tools, and expert systems. To preserve this content over time, we need to freeze and precisely reproduce the execution that dynamically produces that content. Olive, a rough acronym for “Open Library of Images for Virtualized Execution,” is a system built at Carnegie Mellon University. Olive preserves and provides access to this executable content. It relies on virtual machine (VM) technology to bundle software with all of its dependencies. These VMs are streamed over the internet in real time to ensure a smooth user experience while maintaining fidelity to the original execution environment. This demonstration examines some of the challenges the Olive team has encountered in the process of preserving software over the last several years. Among these difficulties are technical challenges, problems of scale, legal limitations, and a lack of existing curation standards for executable content.

Details

Creators

Ryan, Daniel; St. Clair, Gloriana

Institutions

Date

Keywords

preservation; software; virtualization

Publication Type

demonstration

License

CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 AT

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