Jason Scott's VCF Donation

[cjs]

Jason Scott just published a blog post explaining why he won't be attending any more VCF Festivals.

Among these donations were a set of publications, mostly IEEE-related but with a few other sets of titles, to the Vintage Computer Federation, based in New Jersey. The donation was roughly this:



To make this donation, I paid for the containers, filled them, put many issues in bags, and then rented a truck to drive them the roughly 70 miles to the VCF headquarters in Wall, NJ. There I dropped them off and went home. This was roughly 2017.

A number of years later, I contacted the Vintage Computer Federation to ask how the magazines were doing, if they were part of a project, or if I needed to transfer them elsewhere.

I was told they tossed them out. Every one.

However, I was told, they had decided to keep the plastic boxes, and were making use of them.

This sounds so egregious that I'm wondering if there's something more to this story.

 

[commodorejohn]

What the expletive.

 

[cjs]

Well, it seems it might not be quite as bad as Scott made it out to be. There's been some discussion on Hacker News, and one of the posts mentions a couple of responses on twitter.com from Adam Michlin (@amichlin):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1778494138138124432

Well, it never should have been accepted in the first place. But literally everything was being accepted at the time. Finite space combined with salt water air was the culprit after the original poor planning.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1778494742742827195

And whoever told you they were thrown away was misinformed and not involved. There were cycles over and over again of allowing people to save anything they could carry. So it was split up, but mostly found good (not salt water rich) homes.

None the less, this is still pretty bad. I am pretty sure that breaking up the archive and sending pieces off to various private collections is not what Scott intended.

 

[commodorejohn]

Did anyone involved bother to contact Al Kossow/Bitsavers, even?

 

[Al Kossow]

Nope. They also 'lost' a Burroughs small system

 

[sellam]

As the founder of the Vintage Computer Festival and godfather of all of its events, I take umbrage with and exception to Jason Scott's characterization of his failed magazine donation as somehow being associated with the Vintage Computer Festival or any of its events.

Perhaps Jason should either come clean with what his real gripe is, or more specifically target his ire at those actually involved. He should disclose the contents of the donation, and at this point, he should give consideration to the responses that have been made regarding the actual disposition of his donation.

 

[Steve Toner]

I'm having a hard time understanding what the kerfuffle is about.

According to amichlin on the Hacker News site linked in #3:

The collection was popular computer magazines that have long ago been archived. Nothing unique, which is likely why the donation was made in the first place. The blog post implies there was something unique about this donation. There was not.

 

[vwestlife]

Rather than blaming him for the "failed" donation, it should have either been politely refused to begin with, or if VCF could no longer safely store it, then he should have been the first person contacted to ask if he wanted it back before it was divvied up and/or discarded.

If he then said GFY, fair enough, do with it what you want. But it sounds like he was passionate enough about it that even if it was just "popular computer magazines" he would've helped in the process of finding new homes for them.

 

[cjs]

I'm having a hard time understanding what the kerfuffle is about.
According to amichlin on the Hacker News site linked in #3....

Well, assuming that's true, part of the reason for the "kerfuffle" is that it appears nobody told Jason Scott that, and even people like Adam Michlin couldn't be bothered to explain the above until well after the brouhaha had started and he'd made his initial responses on twitter.com and Hacker News.

The message you refer to was a very recent response he made to a query of mine that I posted after I'd started this thread, and long after his twitter.com and initial Hacker News posts.

 

[sellam]

Rather than blaming him for the "failed" donation, it should have either been politely refused to begin with, or if VCF could no longer safely store it, then he should have been the first person contacted to ask if he wanted it back before it was divvied up and/or discarded.

If he then said GFY, fair enough, do with it what you want. But it sounds like he was passionate enough about it that even if it was just "popular computer magazines" he would've helped in the process of finding new homes for them.

This mischaracterizes my point, which is that this has nothing to do with the VCF, and everything to do with individuals at the VCFed organization, and in any event, Jason did not disclose all the relevant details, so I still believe there is more to this than what has been disclosed. Get all the information, including the responses of the relevant parties, and judge for yourself.

I reiterate that none of that has anything to do with Vintage Computer Festival events.

Sellam

 

[cjs]

...this has nothing to do with the VCF, and everything to do with individuals at the VCFed organization..

The donation was made to the VCF, thus VCF as an organisation is responsible for the disposition of the materials. The VCF should not be letting "individuals" over whom they don't have control be doing things with VCF materials.

If you took your car in to be repaired, and a mechanic at the garage damaged it, you certainly wouldn't accept the garage saying, "it was just an individual at our garage; nothing to do with us."

And of course it has something to do with VCF events: the very organisation that allegedly mishandled those materials is the one running those events. If they do badly at one thing they're supposed to be handling, it's a reasonable conclusion that they might do badly at other things, too.

 

[mbbrutman]

Sellam is pointing out that VCF (the festivals) are not the same as VCF (the federation), which is kind of splitting hairs at this point because the VCF (the federation) took over running the VCF West festival that Sellam founded many years ago. And the same group of people (the federation) also sponsor VCF East, which was inspired by VCF West. And it's the same group of people who run VCF East, who run the warehouse and museum that took the donation..

Sellam what you did many years ago isn't relevant here. The complaint is about a donation that was mismanaged in the eyes of the donor, and in this case the donor isn't some crank just dropping off stuff - he's a well known archivist.

 

[sellam]

Sellam is pointing out that VCF (the festivals) are not the same as VCF (the federation), which is kind of splitting hairs at this point because the VCF (the federation) took over running the VCF West festival that Sellam founded many years ago. And the same group of people (the federation) also sponsor VCF East, which was inspired by VCF West. And it's the same group of people who run VCF East, who run the warehouse and museum that took the donation..

Sellam what you did many years ago isn't relevant here. The complaint is about a donation that was mismanaged in the eyes of the donor, and in this case the donor isn't some crank just dropping off stuff - he's a well known archivist.

This is missing a whole lot of context, and again, my point, the most important of which is that those who run the various Vintage Computer Festival events have little to nothing to do with the organization that accepted and disposed of the donation. Granted, VCF East and VCF West are run directly by the VCFed. On the other hand, some of the events, such as VCF Midwest and VCF Europa, have nothing at all to do with the VCFed organization, and are completely independent. And to the extent the other sister events are related, they are still run completely independently.

So no, this is not "splitting hairs". To say that the "VCF" threw out Jason's magazines is a complete mischaracterization and I believe that assertion needs to be corrected or retracted.

 

[mbbrutman]

If you think that Jason Scott has been sloppy with his use of the letters VCF, well, I think you missed the point. I read it as a rant against accepting donations and then not taking care of them. Your umbrage is secondary to the main point.

Either way, pointing out that Jason Scott has possibly done something wrong is best done by talking to Jason Scott. I sincerely doubt that he's reading this thread or this forum, as this is the very VCF group that he's not pleased with. I see you left a comment calling this set of VCF people numbnuts so I don't understand what why you are here, but ok.

 

[sellam]

If you think that Jason Scott has been sloppy with his use of the letters VCF, well, I think you missed the point. I read it as a rant against accepting donations and then not taking care of them. Your umbrage is secondary to the main point.

Either way, pointing out that Jason Scott has possibly done something wrong is best done by talking to Jason Scott. I sincerely doubt that he's reading this thread or this forum, as this is the very VCF group that he's not pleased with. I see you left a comment calling this set of VCF people numbnuts so I don't understand what why you are here, but ok.

Michael,

I think I've been pretty clear in what I've said. You seem to be taking Jason's side of this and ignoring logic, but that's fine. That's your prerogative. My sole purpose here is to make clear that the "Vintage Computer Festival" is much broader than those with whom Jason interacted with his donation, and lumping all the disparate organizations together into one homogeneous thing and disparaging it as one is unfair to the various events and their organizers. It also associates with the Vintage Computer Festival something it is not at all about, and as the founder, I take personal offense to that.

Sellam

 

[commodorejohn]

Maybe you could clarify, then, because frankly I've never been clear on just what the hey VCFed is or how it's associated with/separate from either this forum or the 'fests. Seems like the name just popped up outta nowhere some years back when the site was redesigned...

 

[cjs]

I think I've been pretty clear in what I've said.

Well, you haven't, because this is complete news to me:

...the "Vintage Computer Festival" is much broader than those with whom Jason interacted with his donation, and lumping all the disparate organizations together into one homogeneous thing and disparaging it as one is unfair to the various events and their organizers. It also associates with the Vintage Computer Festival something it is not at all about, and as the founder, I take personal offense to that.

Ironically, if what Adam Michlin said is correct, we now have two instances in front of us where people associated with some sort of "VCF" in some way have caused a big stir not through doing something terribly wrong but simply by not providing reasonably clear explanations of what went on or how an organisation works.

As for being "unfair to the various events and their organisers," let's keep in mind that it's those organisers who are choosing to call themselves VCF. If they name their event "VCF Foo" and people get the impression that they're connected in some way with the folks doing "VCF Bar," whose fault is that?

It seems to me that event organisers using the "VCF" name are trying to ride on the reputation of other "VCF" events and organisations. And if they're going to do that, they're obviously going to be associated with any bad reputational events, as well as any good ones.

I'm sorry that you feel personally offended by folks associating people working under the name "VCF" with other people working under the name VCF, but that people who do so isn't exactly something that couldn't be predicted. This is why we have trademarks (if you're part of the 501(c)3, which obviously has lawyers), or the ability to use a different name (if you're not part of that "official" VCF).

 

[ajacocks]

Folks, as is always the case, there is much more to this disagreement than has been made public.

Jason is angry with VCF East, which is not the same as any of the other organizations. The name was created by Sellaam and he has allowed a number of different groups to use it.

I will not air any internal information or throw blame or accusations around.

To be clear, the following groups have NOTHING to do with any of this: (non-exclusive list)
VCF Midwest
VCF Southeast
VCF Southwest
VCF SoCal
VCF Europa
Sellaam Ismail

Please do not yell at any of those folks about this disagreement between Jason Scott and VCF East.

Thanks!
- Alex

 

[amichlin]

A follow up I posted on HackerNews:

Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on Twitter (X) and was blocked as a result and made out to be accusing OP of being a liar. I only want to interject the facts as I know them and maybe offer up a couple of opinions.
When it was donated, the policy was take everything that anyone wanted to donate. So many people were thrilled to volunteer time to "rescue" just about anything, a laudable goal, and very few people volunteered to spend time to sort through the donations, even if only to make it fit in a finite space.

The structure at the time was a national (still unelected to this day) board and an executive director. My role, at the time of the donation, was as a volunteer who spent an insane amount of hours working in the warehouse to find ways to fit things and count things so that they could be put out for surplus sale. At one point, the warehouse contained over 60 Commodore 64 floppy drives. But this wasn't hoarding, this was being buried in unopened boxes and no one keeping track of what to keep and what to rehome or even what was in the warehouse.

Up until about 3 years ago, if you went to a VCFestival East and purchased "VCF Surplus", it was because I and one or two others spent countless hours trying to count what was in the warehouse. All of that money raised was earmarked to warehouse improvements, I might add. We opened hundreds of boxes to count equipment and try to sort what paper was and wasn't archived and even built a library that was intended to be moved to a climate controlled space (I believe it still has not been moved, but it is at least accessible as a library instead of hundreds of closed boxes of paper). Paper that was needed to be archived was archived. Paper that was considered important enough was added to the library. Paper that wasn't as important (like popular computer magazines) was offered over and over again to the membership. Almost everything found a good home. This, however, explains why the donation wasn't returned. It was parted out as part of a bigger solution and dealt with on a piece by piece basis. Having literally been there when the donation was made, it was clear that this was odds and ends that had long ago been checked for archiving. So this, if only in my opinion, was dumped on VCF as a convenient, free, storage opportunity. Does anyone really think it would have been donated to a warehouse without climate control by the ocean if there was any hint of archiving needed? By one of the most well known archive activists on the planet? Yet OP uses the implication that history has been lost to create unnecessary drama. No history has been lost and a lot of history has been saved. A lot of history is out in the world, even if maybe in private hands, instead of spoiling in a warehouse directly exposed to salt water air. And yes, climate control is being worked on, I hear donations are accepted, but do know that most of the stuff still in the warehouse was heading towards recycling or worse when it ended up in the warehouse.

The warehouse is now managed by an *elected* VCF Mid-Atlantic Steering Committee (something I originally proposed, co-wrote the bylaws, and was a founding member of). I don't know what they are and aren't doing now, but I do know none of them were involved with this mess. Taking the organization to task for a lack of institutional knowledge is fine, but ignoring primary facts stated by people who were there troubles me greatly. All the complaining blogs posts wont change the way the warehouse is run, but the membership is completely able to vote people in and out if they believe the warehouse is being mismanaged in any way. They are also always looking for new volunteers, if you are somewhat near Monmouth County New Jersey.

tl;dr: Nothing to see here. Just unnecessary drama.

 

[Plasma]

Maybe I missed it, but I don't see what the actual agreement was regarding the donation (from either side). This is a key piece of information. Since Jason is omitting it, this leads me to believe that there was no agreement, and his donation was unconditional. He made a reasonable, but incorrect assumption that it would be archived. So while I can understand why he is upset, I also don't think he has the right to be upset.