Sustainability and bit-rot
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The document discusses the challenges of maintaining websites, particularly the phenomenon of software rot, where software deteriorates over time due to a lack of updates and changes in its environment. It emphasizes the importance of using open-source solutions to facilitate maintenance and avoid pitfalls associated with custom development. Additionally, it briefly covers HTML5 and related technologies, highlighting their significance in modern web development.
Sustainability and bit-rot
- 1. Sustainability and Bit-rot Kiran Jonnalagadda, HasGeek JStor Workshop, Bangalore, December 2010
- 2. Building Websites Write a spec Define a budget Raise money Hire a team Build!
- 4. Maintenance Problems 1. Team has changed Original developers not available New developers don’t understand the code Rewriting easier than documenting and fixing old code 2. Software has to be upgraded Software is not compatible; bit-rot has set in
- 5. What is bit-rot? Software rot, also known as code rot or software erosion or software decay or software entropy, is a type of bit rot. It describes the perceived slow deterioration of software over time that will eventually lead to it becoming faulty, unusable, or otherwise in need of maintenance. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides. —Wikipedia
- 6. Old: Working on the metal New: Software ecosystem
- 7. Beware of Forks: You are alone on the path
- 8. “Functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. I will say this until you like it.” —Ted Dziuba
- 9. Pattern: Custom Fork You want a website Your custom feature is a popular request, so the You found a CMS that has CMS also adds it and most of the wanted features releases an update Developer says he can add Your custom version the additional features you implemented it differently, want, so you commission it so you can’t upgrade: you Developer hands you code will lose data if you do and moves on
- 10. What you should do Never implement a custom Make it open source and feature for yourself; the encourage adoption by maintenance is also yours others; open source is useless without adoption When you get some software written, give the Open source is a developer an incentive to mechanism for distributing maintain it without you the cost of maintenance to a having to pay for it large number of others Let the developer own it This is hard
- 11. It’s not just you Software developers reinvent the wheel all the time, only to regret it later; the itch to reinvent never goes away “The shock of recognition came to me when I was sitting on the bus and reading the RFC for NFS, intending to write an NFS server on top of the ZODB so we could use grep and CVS. Suddenly I sat up and thought ‘I have an object database on top of a filesystem, and now I want to emulate a filesystem on top of it. What am I doing? Why not just use a filesystem in the first place?’” —A. M. Kuchling, April 2001
- 12. Software Upgrades All major software systems evolve coping mechanisms Windows DLL hell in the 3.x and Windows 95 era Ubuntu 6-month upgrades Preferences for any software application Web app customization: themes, plugins, standard config
- 13. File Formats PDF and HTML are stable; files from 10 years ago still open PDF is not re-flowable; suitable only for archiving paper layouts Archivability is still a concern
- 14. Raw HTML is tedious <h3> What is HTML5? </h3> <p> The term HTML5 has come to represent not just the new version of hypertext markup language, but a suite of related technologies and proposed standards. These include: </p> <ul> <li>CSS3, Geo-location, Web Sockets, Canvas, Client Storage, Audio and Video.</li> <li>Rich Internet Apps enabled by Advanced JavaScript Engines and Mobile Browsers.</li> </ul>
- 15. Plain text markup Markdown ### What is HTML5 The term HTML5 has come to represent not just the new version of hypertext markup language, but a suite of related technologies and proposed standards. These include: * CSS3, Geo-location, Web Sockets, Canvas, Client Storage, Audio and Video. * Rich Internet Apps enabled by Advanced JavaScript Engines and Mobilewsers.
- 16. Plain text markup MediaWiki === What is HTML5 === The term HTML5 has come to represent not just the new version of hypertext markup language, but a suite of related technologies and proposed standards. These include: * CSS3, Geo-location, Web Sockets, Canvas, Client Storage, Audio and Video. * Rich Internet Apps enabled by Advanced JavaScript Engines and Mobilewsers.
- 17. Plain text markup BBCode Each of these converts easily readable plain text Markdown into HTML MediaWiki The original plain text Textile should be archivable, but each convertor is also WikiCreole subject to bit-rot ReStructuredText There’s safety in numbers; And many more... how many use them?
- 18. Published text: ePub Reflowable content; no fixed paper size Single archive file contains everything The most promising archive format Two incompatible sub-formats: XHTML and DTBook
- 19. Image credits Haulin’ rust, macro rust on a micro bus, thumbs up, thumbs down, fork in the road
Editor's Notes
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- #6: Developers don&#x2019;t care about sustainability. It shows all the time.\nWe&#x2019;re going to focus on the second.\n
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- #8: Nobody works solo anymore. All software depends on some other software, maintained by someone else.\n
- #9: The cost of forking is high: maintenance is yours alone\n
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- #13: ZODB is the database of Plone. AMK highlighted the problem in 2001, but as late as 2010 we use Plone and then suffer database upgrade problems.\n
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- #15: HTML has too much gunk in it: text, markup, presentation, scripts, external resources, external links. Not all of it will survive forever. Some of it will (a) disappear or (b) become incompatible (mostly JS).\n
- #16: WYSIWYG editors produce garbage, so plain text markup formats are preferred.\n
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- #19: ReST is incredibly powerful, but the only parser implementation is in Python, unlike Markdown which has an implementation in every major language.\n
- #20: The reflowable feature is a problem for fixed-layout content such as comics\n
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