I've thought about this a lot. It's becoming a serious issue for museums since increasingly contemporary artwork incorporates digital processes, for example vid

I've thought about this a lot. It's becoming a serious issue for museums since increasingly contemporary artwork incorporates digital processes, for example video and photographs. Archivists worry about stability of storage media as well as long-term usability of CDROM, DVD, magnetic drives, SSDs, etc. The ability (or lack of it) to play/view an original archive is already a major problem. Think about the history of floppy disks, zip media, digital tape cartridges, and numerous others. I recall these media being quite prevalent back in the 90's, and that's only <=30 years ago. (I have my own share of them.) Today these media are ancient history and soon, if not already, as inscrutable as the writing systems of obscure prehistoric civilizations. As said in several comments, the situation is worse for software. Keeping long superseded equipment running is very difficult. (I have some of that too.) Preserving source code should be pretty straightforward, printed out with archival ink on 100% cotton fiber, acid-free and buffered paper would work. The only catch is long-term storage of the printed document. Paper itself is subject to environmental degradation. Museum standards specify constant 20&deg;C, 50% humidity, sealed against atmospheric pollutants and no light exposure. That should hold it for at least 100 years. :-) Technologies are great, seems a good bet that a brilliant startup will think of new ways to preserve the history of our epoch.