OpenPA and internet history

Paul Weissmann, maintainer of OpenPA, the definitive source of information on HP's PA-RISC hardware and software, has published an article about how the state of information preservation on this topic has changed substantially since OpenPA's founding in 1999.

The main challenges for OpenPA at the time were both finding all the available information, as search engines were still young in the late 1990s, as well as making sense of it all as it was just so much and new sources kept appearing. This went on until the mid to late 2000s, when solid and stable sources could be found and referenced, which OpenPA did.

The Internet and information on it changed since then, slowly but surely, in a profound way. Many original sources have disappeared and so much information has been lost in only two decades - making OpenPA the authoritative source for PA-RISC in some ways. A long journey from documenting complex information of the 1990s to an historic archive on the PA-RISC era.

OpenPA is an amazing resource, so if you happen to have any information worth sharing with Weissmann, please do so.