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BetaWiki – An open encyclopedia of software history

103 points by skilled 3y ago

jamesy0ung 3y ago
Not a huge fan of BetaArchive. You need to have a beta to upload to download from the server, I get that they want betas and stuff like that, but the closed nature really annoys me
- rezedus 3y ago
  BetaWiki is not BetaArchive, they're ran by different people. It doesn't provide any downloads, it only serves as a wiki.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  That seems near impossible to be able to do. Unless.. I do have some old CD's from various computer magazines and some of those might have had some beta installers on them. Either way, hopefully someone is mirroring things from this BetaArchive website onto Archive.org and other places! I'd hate to see another burn-down of Alexandria Library event like when What.CD was lost resulting in permanent unavaiblability of historically important data that could have been saved if anyone cared enough to do it.
- jamesy0ung 3y ago
  Oops, my bad. I didn’t know they weren’t related. Sorry
betocmn 3y ago
Really cool! I should go back to my hobby project [1] and make specific software timelines referencing BetaWiki : ) https://worldintimelines.com/software-and-programming-languages/ https://worldintimelines.com/software-and-programming-langua...
chris_wot 3y ago
Is this a new project? Doesn't seem to have a huge amount of articles.
- eesmith 3y ago
  There's history going back to at least 2013: https://betawiki.net/index.php?title=Microsoft_Windows&action=history&offset=20190326233145%7C42928&limit=500 https://betawiki.net/index.php?title=Microsoft_Windows&actio... . It seems to be focused on PC/"consumer" history. No mention of IBM 360, VMS, PDP, AIX, or IRIX. There's a small bit about Solaris at https://betawiki.net/wiki/Solaris https://betawiki.net/wiki/Solaris but no pages for any of its mentioned spinoffs.
angelmm 3y ago
I love these kind of wikis. Tbh, I'm obsessed with content conservation so any initiative like this brings my attention. Am I the only one running an ArchiveBox [1] for a personal archive? - [1] https://archivebox.io/ https://archivebox.io/
mikewarot 3y ago
It's an interesting idea, but email verification is apparently broken.
jug 3y ago
For other kinds of software history, don't miss this gem! https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor It can be a real time sink!

103 points by skilled 3y ago

Not a huge fan of BetaArchive. You need to have a beta to upload to download from the server, I get that they want betas and stuff like that, but the closed nature really annoys me

rezedus 3y ago
BetaWiki is not BetaArchive, they're ran by different people. It doesn't provide any downloads, it only serves as a wiki.
codetrotter 3y ago
That seems near impossible to be able to do. Unless.. I do have some old CD's from various computer magazines and some of those might have had some beta installers on them. Either way, hopefully someone is mirroring things from this BetaArchive website onto Archive.org and other places! I'd hate to see another burn-down of Alexandria Library event like when What.CD was lost resulting in permanent unavaiblability of historically important data that could have been saved if anyone cared enough to do it.
jamesy0ung 3y ago
Oops, my bad. I didn’t know they weren’t related. Sorry

betocmn 3y ago

Really cool! I should go back to my hobby project [1] and make specific software timelines referencing BetaWiki : ) https://worldintimelines.com/software-and-programming-languages/ https://worldintimelines.com/software-and-programming-langua...

chris_wot 3y ago

Is this a new project? Doesn't seem to have a huge amount of articles.

eesmith 3y ago
There's history going back to at least 2013: https://betawiki.net/index.php?title=Microsoft_Windows&action=history&offset=20190326233145%7C42928&limit=500 https://betawiki.net/index.php?title=Microsoft_Windows&actio... . It seems to be focused on PC/"consumer" history. No mention of IBM 360, VMS, PDP, AIX, or IRIX. There's a small bit about Solaris at https://betawiki.net/wiki/Solaris https://betawiki.net/wiki/Solaris but no pages for any of its mentioned spinoffs.

angelmm 3y ago

I love these kind of wikis. Tbh, I'm obsessed with content conservation so any initiative like this brings my attention. Am I the only one running an ArchiveBox [1] for a personal archive? - [1] https://archivebox.io/ https://archivebox.io/

mikewarot 3y ago

It's an interesting idea, but email verification is apparently broken.

jug 3y ago

For other kinds of software history, don't miss this gem! https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor It can be a real time sink!