Yesterday the Open Preservation Foundation held a webinar on JHOVE, presented by Carl Wilson. I was really impressed by the progress he’s made there, and any rumors of JHOVE’s death (including ones I may have contributed to) have been greatly exaggerated.
The big changes include reorganizing the code under Maven and making installation more straightforward. These are both badly needed changes. I never had the opportunity to do them at Harvard, and when I took the code over for a while after leaving there, I focused on fixing bugs rather than fixing the design.
In my comments during the webinar, I pointed out the importance of Stephen Abrams’ contribution, which a lot of people don’t remember. I didn’t create JHOVE; he did. The core application and design principles were already in place when I entered the project. OPF will, I’m sure, give him the credit he deserves.
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