Bernard L. Peuto, Chairman 2003–2007
Al Kossow, Chairman 2007–
Paul McJones, Editor
Last updated 23 October 2025
The seed for the Computer History Museum's Software Preservation Group was Grady Booch's 2002 email “Preserving classic software products”. This led to a 2003 workshop at the Museum and to the founding of what was originally called the Software Collection Committee. The committee held monthly meetings for about four years and a 2006 workshop brought in outside collectors and archivists to share ideas.
The monthly meetings covered a wide variety of topics, and additional discussions took place on the SCC_active mailing list. The idea of pilot projects to assess the difficulty of tracking down historic software quickly arose. A project to find the original FORTRAN compiler began in 2004 and reached a successful conclusion by 2005. Other early pilot projects were NLS/Augment and the programming language APL. The Software Collection Committee was renamed the Software Preservation Group in late 2006 and wound down its meetings during 2007. However a series of preservation projects continued.
In March 2005 a Plone content management system was set up to allow communication among committee members and to encourage outside participation. In Summer 2025 it was converted to the current form to record the early history of workshops and meetings and serve as a permanent repository for the various preservation projects. The selection of projects was based on the interests of the people carrying them out — see the Acknowledgements below.
Grady Booch provided the call to action, Len Shustek the Computer History Museum, and Bernard L. Peuto the Software Preservation Group. The Museum staff provided excellent support and patient teaching about the internals of museums. Michael Powell set up the original Plone content management system. Many people participated in the meetings, workshops, and email list. Paul McJones, Phil and Kathe Gust, Jonathan Cheyer, Lee Courtney, Christian Langreiter, Randall Neff, Paula Newman, Dick Blaine, Robert L. Patrick, Wendell R. Pepperdine, Lars Brinkhoff, and Bruce Ray created preservation projects. David Brock and Hansen Hsu suggested updating the web site. Ton Luong and Vinh Quach maintained the old server for many years and built the new infrastructure using GitHub and Azure. Paul McJones expanded the web site over the years and converted it to the present form.