Preservation Glossary

Browse 7 preservation terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

7 Preservation Terms

Abandonware: Abandonware is software that has been discontinued, abandoned, or is no longer sold, supported, or updated by its original developer or publisher. The term...
Archive.org: The Internet Archive and its associated services, widely known for preserving websites, media, software, and public digital history. In tech culture,...
Code Archive: A stored collection of source code kept for historical reference, compliance, preservation, or future reuse. In culture, code archives matter when old systems...
Code Museum: A repository or system kept around mostly as historical reference rather than for active use. In engineering slang, a code museum can be educational, but it...
Code Noah: A joking label for the person trying to save every old script, data format, or compatibility edge case before a big migration or cleanup. In engineering slang,...
Internet Archive: The nonprofit digital archive best known for the Wayback Machine, which preserves historical snapshots of websites as well as books, audio, software, and other...
SWH: Usually referring to Software Heritage, a large-scale initiative to collect, preserve, and archive publicly available source code for the long term. In open...