How about after it's over?
I don't see how that would have made things any better (or worse).
Not saying that was necessarily the logic behind their actions; just that they may not have had the right to make or share copies of that information.
That they may not have been able to scan the collection for legal reasons is a very good point, and that there was allegedly substantial IEEE material in the collection makes it very plausible that this was an issue. But the opinion you gave was specifically:
...if it's true then many of those materials were probably not able to be archived and uploaded in the first place, and so complaining that they were lost given away is irrelevant.
I argue that, far from being irrelevant, in such cases it's far
more relevant because maintaining the collection and access to it is far more important when scans are not available. The last thing you should be doing with such a collection is parting it out to private collectors, which makes the loss of the material more likely for several reasons, and also pretty much invariably reduces public access to the material.
Lets be honest how many people write up legal documents signed by both parties and notarized every time they donate something? Do you have the funds and time to go to court if the second party doesn't do exactly what was written?
Precisely. Much of our day to day activities and interaction with others relies on trust rather than spending massive amounts of time, effort and money on detailing contracts.
While the loss of the collection Jason Scott donated is a very sad thing (probably, as I'm not entirely sure what was in it), what is of more concern to me is that various people involved with VCF have stepped forward to defend the action rather than admit to a mistake (whether that be the actual disposal of the collection or merely miscommunication about its disposition) and consider how things can be improved moving forward.
That said, I've had a private contact with someone involved who has explained to me some of the history of and issues within VCFed management, and who has told me he and others recognise the problems (some systemic and very long term) and are working to mitigate them. Now
that is the kind of response I find encouraging. Even without external evidence that anything he's saying is true, communicating that problems are recognised tends to make me trust someone a lot more.
I'm feeling I'm personally pretty much done with this issue: there doesn't seem a lot more to learn about it unless someone involved decides to be more forthcoming with the details of what was in the collection and where the pieces of it actually went. My impression is that Jason Scott may not have been entirely correct or complete about what actually happened, but VCFed has been extremely poor about informing people (then and now) about what they've been doing, and certain people jumping to VCF's defense (while continuing to be parsimonious with actual information) made the situation worse, not better.
