The software exchange platform GitHub wants to begin on 2.2.2020 to perpetuate all actively maintained public code holdings of its platform. The Microsoft subsidiary is the world's largest platform for software developers and wants to make sure "future historians can learn from our open source projects and metadata," as the project website puts it.
The code is stored on silver halide coated polyester films. This technique was developed by the Norwegian company Piql, which together with the state-owned mining company SNSK has created a data archive in "mine 3" on Spitsbergen - in a disused coal mine in permafrost. There, the films should last at least 1000 years, in a steel-jacketed container, which in turn is in a sealed chamber. GitHub will then be Norway's largest customer, so far, documents in the "Pit 3" are already from the Vatican and, as Bloomberg Businessweek writes, "the recipe for the special sauce of a certain burger chain".
No problems "in the foreseeable future"
GitHub's partners include the Digital Library Internet Archive, founded in 1996, and Microsoft's Silica project. His scientists have recently burned the film "Superman" from 1978 with a special laser on a quartz glass disc, which should be readable even in 10,000 years.
GitHub admits that the area is "affected by climate change, but it is likely that in the foreseeable future this will only apply to the outer few meters of permafrost." It is not expected that the warming will affect the stability of the mine. Just one mile away is the famous Seed Vault Global Seed Vault, "reinforcing the status of the area as a 'stable long-term location for the collective knowledge of humanity."
But this exactly shows how shaky the thing with the "foreseeable future" is. Because of unexpectedly high temperatures, water has penetrated there at least several times, at least into the access tunnel, so that the operators had to improve. On Spitsbergen, it becomes clear how fast climate change forecasts are becoming obsolete - because everything is going much faster than expected.