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Originally Posted by alexh
Maybe, but access to the data within them is not.
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Yes it is. At the very very worst, you could simply use the library to extract it, but it will never come to that. Even if that was the case, you wouldn't have to worry about bit rot, bad reads, save games, hiscores, viruses - because we have already solved those problems.
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Because currently no-one can add IPF support to any platform not deemed suitable by SPS. That is not true preservation.
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I would argue that it's not a preservation problem that you can't play IPF's on an XBox...
We have only have a handful of requests to support these platforms, otherwise we would have ported it already (assuming we can use a legal devkit). I do understand that those people find this frustrating though, but we have to weight the costs and the benefits in everything we do.
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You are absolutely correct. But it is essential for any true 'preservation' that everything be transparent, open so that there is enough information from the word go so that the data can be recovered by almost anyone, at any time.
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As above, the data can be recovered by almost anyone, at any time. However, you do have a valid point in that in an ideal world the source to the IPF library would be available - it's not like we don't realise this... We agree, and that is why we have always said it would be released eventually. The problem is that it is not the right time for us right now. It would cause us problems that we would just rather not deal with at the moment.
As it happens, some of the reasons against releasing the source have dropped away in the last few years. Hopefully many of the others will drop away in the coming years. Unfortunately, there is significant preparitory work that would need to be done to ensure our operations are not impacted. Right now, we just have too much other work to do... like fighting against time to get the data off the originals...