One of many Web’s Oldest Software program Archives Is Shutting Down

In a transfer that marks the top of an period, New Mexico State College (NMSU) not too long ago introduced the upcoming closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three many years, the archive has been a key useful resource for customers of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which as soon as competed fiercely with Microsoft Home windows.

In an announcement made to The Register, a consultant of NMSU wrote, “Now we have made the tough choice to not host these information on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Though I’m unable to enter specifics, we needed to consider our priorities and needed to make the tough choice to discontinue the service.”

Hobbes is hosted by the Division of Data & Communication Applied sciences at New Mexico State College in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Within the official announcement, the location reads, “After a few years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu shall be decommissioned and can not be accessible. As of April 15th, 2024, this website will not exist.”

We reached out to New Mexico State College to inquire concerning the historical past of the Hobbes archive however didn’t obtain a response. The earliest report we have discovered of the Hobbes archive on-line is that this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At round 32 years previous, minimal, that makes Hobbes one of many oldest software program archives on the web, akin to the University of Michigan’s archives and ibiblio at UNC.

Archivists comparable to Jason Scott of the Web Archive have stepped as much as say that the information hosted on Hobbes are secure and already mirrored elsewhere. “No one ought to fear about Hobbes, I’ve received Hobbes dealt with,” wrote Scott on Mastodon in early January. OS/2 World.com additionally published a statement about making a mirror. But it surely’s nonetheless notable at any time when such an previous and vital piece of web historical past bites the mud.

Like many archives, Hobbes began as an FTP website. “The first distribution of information on the web had been through FTP servers,” Scott tells Ars Technica. “And as FTP servers went down, they’d even be mirrored as subdirectories in different FTP servers. Corporations like CDROM.COM / Walnut Creek turned methods to only get a CD-ROM of the gadgets, however they’d usually make the info accessible at http://ftp.cdrom.com to obtain.”

The Hobbes website is a priceless digital time capsule. You’ll be able to nonetheless discover the Top 50 Downloads page, which incorporates sound and picture editors, and OS/2 builds of the Thunderbird electronic mail consumer. The archive accommodates hundreds of OS/2 video games, functions, utilities, software program growth instruments, documentation, and server software program relationship again to the launch of OS/2 in 1987. There is a sure appeal in operating throughout OS/2 wallpapers from 1990, and even the archive’s Update Policy is a historic gem—final up to date on March 12, 1999.

The legacy of OS/2

OS/2 started as a three way partnership between IBM and Microsoft, undertaken as a deliberate alternative for IBM PC DOS (additionally known as “MS-DOS” within the kind bought by Microsoft for PC clones). Regardless of superior capabilities like 32-bit processing and multitasking, OS/2 later competed with and struggled to achieve traction towards Home windows. The partnership between IBM and Microsoft dissolved after the success of Windows 3.0, resulting in divergent paths in OS methods for the 2 firms.

By means of iterations just like the Warp series, OS/2 established a key presence in area of interest markets that required excessive stability, comparable to ATMs and the New York subway system. Immediately, its legacy continues in specialised functions and in newer variations (like eComStation) maintained by third-party distributors—regardless of being overshadowed within the broader market by Linux and Home windows.

A footprint like that’s value preserving, and a lack of one in every of OS/2’s main archives, even when mirrored elsewhere, is a cultural blow. Apparently, Hobbes has reportedly nearly disappeared earlier than however obtained a keep of execution. Within the feedback part for an article on The Register, somebody named “TrevorH” wrote, “This isn’t the primary time that Hobbes has introduced it is going away. Final time it was rescued after quite a lot of complaints and a lot of college students or college got here ahead to proceed to take care of it.”

As the ultimate shutdown approaches in April, the legacy of Hobbes is a reminder of the significance of preserving the digital heritage of software program for future generations—in order that many years from now, historians can look again and see how issues received to the place they’re right this moment.

This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.