Dear Colleagues,

Today we are proud to launch the EaaSI Open Source Software Sandbox!

The sandbox provides free, public access to emulated computer environments featuring operating systems and software from over twenty years of open source development including:

• landmark open source distributions, 

• alternatives to major proprietary software titles, 

• interfaces for the R programming language and 

• open source educational software

We’re offering the sandbox to show how EaaSI makes access to emulation possible at the click of a button. You can also review the metadata records we are sharing via the Wikidata knowledge base to learn more about the open software inside and to verify its accuracy.  We invite you to poke around these fascinating legacy programs and to learn more about the capabilities of the EaaSI system as you do.

STAY INFORMED

To receive bi-monthly EaaSI updates via newsletter and share your software preservation successes/challenges, sign up for the Software Preservation Network mailing list by visiting https://groups.google.com/d/forum/software-preservation-network. 

If you have questions for the project team, please contact the EaaSI Community Outreach Lead, Jessica Meyerson, at <jessica[at]educopia[dot]org>.

MORE ABOUT EAASI

With generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and led by Yale University Library, the EaaSI program builds on previous work to apply the Emulation-as-a-Service(EaaS) framework for access and use of preserved software and digital objects. The project is focused on scaling the technological framework necessary for multiple institutions to configure, share, and access software and configured environments. EaaSI is focused on a distributed, community-driven architecture that sits on top of existing digital preservation infrastructure. This directly complements existing efforts by the Software Preservation Network and others to address key aspects of software preservation including legal advocacy, research about local software preservation needs, institutional capacity building for software preservation, collection development, professional development and training, and workflow recommendations.