Flash is kind of an in-between problematic case. It’s a theoretically open format, but the only playback software that can actually play it back is Macromedia’s proprietary player, despite some efforts to create open-source players (there are some GPL players, but they choke on all but the simplest stuff). Whether this is because it’s horribly complex, because nobody’s invested sufficient resources in writing the player, because the open specifications aren’t actually as complete and transparent as claimed, or some other reason, it does make the situation somewhat uneasy. The HyperCard comparison is not too far off, IMO, with the added problem that reimplementing Flash playback from scratch is actually quite a bit harder than reimplementing HyperCard.

Firefox we could legally include. Plugins, in general, no, unless we get permission from the company that made them. I’ve already wasted too much of my life trying to do things like that in working on the New Media Reader – with results that were at best mixed.

Regarding Firefox, if we did include it, why stop there? We might as well include a whole operating system to run Firefox and the e-lit that can be viewed in it. Of course, if we did that, it might not run on the hardware that’s around in eight years…

Basically, we have to draw the line somewhere to be able to do this. The Electronic Literature Collection is an electronic literature project, not a browser preservation project, so we’re not worrying about preserving the browser, we’re just putting together a collection of e-lit.

Hardware or OS changes may still require an emulator in the future, but I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to avoid that.

I agree completely. The only thing to be done in general is to write the emulators that are necessary. Doing so is a substantial project all its own. Putting together a collection like this, while leaving that problem aside for the moment, is still going to be worthwhile, and will help to show a lot of people the full range of things that computers can do.

Hardware or OS changes may still require an emulator in the future, but I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to avoid that. Unless you’re thinking that sticking with highly standardized HTML files only may allow the media to continue being accessible, but that seems questionable. (Heck, in 10 years maybe no one will bother with CD-ROM drives anyway, and the collection will have to be copied to the new common flash-ram or holographic media format to be accessible.)

I think your issue is with us allowing work that requires standard browsers and common plugins. If we didn’t allow browsers and, say, the Flash plugin to be used, it wouldn’t really be possible to represent a wide range of functioning e-lit in the Collection. Besides the substantial amount of work in HTML, a lot of stuff that is worth sharing with people is in Flash. If all of this stuff doesn’t work in eight years, well, that’s too bad. We’ll try to make things as easy to access and run as possible. But our project isn’t an attempt to make every proprietary computer program run forever, and we can’t fix update sabotage inflicted by giant corporations like Adobe/Macromedia.

Some of the stuff on the CD-ROM will still work after eight years. Some of it probably won’t, despite our best efforts. Still, the Collection can help people read this work, study it, teach it, and learn about it a great deal in the next few years. And it’s not like we’re taking other versions of the work away. Someone eight or more years in the future, thanks to the Collection, will have an additional way to try to get access to a piece of electronic literature and to get it running. Two additional ways, actually, since the same Collection will be published on CD-ROM and online.

I know you have plenty of experience with digital archiving, too, and I’d be glad to her what exactly your concerns are here, if these aren’t them.

I have a lot of hypercard stacks to show you.