Uncovering progress in FOSS-based archeology (NewsForge)

[Posted June 30, 2006 by ris]

NewsForge looks at free software and archeology. "The discovery of the free software philosophy and development model in archeology is a consequence of several methodology problems that caused what some call the "great crisis" of archeology. According to researcher Benjamin Ducke, "Since the 1990s ... there has been a lot of development on fundamental quantitative methods but no software to put them into practice on a broad scale." However, Ducke continues, today there is much more awareness of what is possible and needed, as well as the notion that free software and formats can play an essential role. Many researchers have realized that proprietary archeology software is a dead end from many points of view, both scientific and economic."

Uncovering progress in FOSS-based archeology (NewsForge)

Posted Jul 1, 2006 9:32 UTC (Sat) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link] (1 responses)

Amusingly, free software is also good for computer archeology. When the source is available, you can find out how something worked (given time). With proprietary software, once the hardware is gone, you're stuffed.

Digging up bits

Posted Jul 3, 2006 0:57 UTC (Mon) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Actually, that's what I thought the title referred to. Had to read the blurb to be disabused.