Archiving Groklaw

One of our missions here at ibiblio is archiving dynamic websites. One place that we are putting those skills into action is Groklaw.net. Groklaw was started by paralegal Pamela Jones in 2003 as an “open source legal research project,” a place where legal practitioners and computer experts, as well as those just looking to understand law and specific legal cases could go to discuss and learn from each other. The site was active from 2003 to 2013.

Groklaw contains detailed history including timelines, court documents, and exhibits of cases such as SCO v IBM (a long-running dispute over Linux source code), Oracle v Google (regarding Google’s use of the Java API in early versions of the Android OS, a precursor to Google v Oracle (which is set to be argued in front of the US Supreme Court in March 2020), and Apple v Samsung (a patent dispute over smartphone design).

Student Systems Administrator Chase Pasciuto has been working tirelessly to archive the site so that it is all accessible in a static form (forum posts included). The goal is to keep the information available to the public for information and historic purposes in a static form.