Geek

GitHub, the world’s largest open-source platform for software and programs has safely locked the data of huge value and magnitude in a coal mine in Longyearbyen’s Norwegian town in the Arctic region.
Back in November 2019, GitHub Arctic Code Vault was first announced.

The GitHub Arctic Code Vault is a data repository preserved in the Arctic World Archive (AWA), a very-long-term archival facility 250 meters deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. The archive is located in a decommissioned coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, closer to the North Pole than the Arctic Circle.

Last year, GitHub said that it plans to capture a snapshot of every active public repository on 02/02/2020 and preserve that data in the Arctic Code Vault.

The project began on February 2, when the firm took a snapshot of all of GitHub’s active public repositories to store them in the vault. They initially intended to travel to Norway and personally escort the world’s open-source technology to the Arctic but their plans were derailed by the global pandemic. Then, they had to wait until 8 July for the Arctic Data Vault data to be deposited.

GitHub announced that the code was successfully deposited in the Arctic Code Vault on July 8, 2020. Over the past several months, GitHub worked with its archive partners Piql to write the 21TB of GitHub repository data to 186 reels of piqlFilm (digital photosensitive archival film).

GitHub’s strategic software director, Julia Metcalf, has written a blog post on the company’s website notifying the completion of GitHub’s Archive Program on July 8th. Discussing the objective of the Archive Program, Metcalf wrote “Our mission is to preserve open-source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to last a thousand years.”

The Arctic Code Vault is only a small part of the wider GitHub Archive Program, however, which sees the company partner with the Long Now Foundation, Internet Archive, Software Heritage Foundation, Microsoft Research, and others.