The paradox of open source and digital preservation

Interesting view from Unesco about the economics of open source for a fully functioning OAIS digital preservation solution. Unesco is a big supporter of open source but it notes that when there is a need for a fully integrated standards based system for storage and management suitable for long term access an open source solution requires significant financial resource.

Tessella’s approach is to provide a commercial Digital Preservation platform that is supported and that has frequent new releases. Individual solutions and preservation strategies are created by adding workflows, schemas and file transformation tools which can be made open source. This is a “best of both” approach – the financial resource required is directed at business processes or innovation but not at basic software engineering.

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