Archaeology and FOSS Trends

Archaeology has been a passion of mine since I was a kid. Prior to getting into computer science and music, archaeology was one of the professions I wanted to pursue. To this day, using the internet and reading as much as I can I try to stay involved in what is current in the archaeological field.

Much of the software technology used in the archeological field has been proprietary until very recently. I just bumped into an open source product called ArcheOS that is a GNU Linux distributionhas specifically configured for archaology! The 1.0 release was presented late in 2005 and has since been evolving following the open source model.

In the article, "Uncovering progress in FOSS-based archeology", it discusses the progress made to date with FOSS for the archaology. I will research more into what ArcheOS does and should have a cursory working knowledge of this stuff sometime this year if I can devote a few days to it.

I am surprised at how FOSS has been finding its way into the archeological field. I guess with continuing technology trends, open source technology appears to be invading just about every aspect of life where software is required and used. It makes logical sense that open source technology is finding its way into other fields other than business, science and technology.