// open-source & community

Open Code. Open History.

The infrastructure preserving the early web is built, maintained, and improved by a global community of archivists, historians, and developers. All core tools are free, open, and community-driven.

12
Active Repositories
3.4k
Community Contributors
89%
Test Coverage
MIT / CC4
Dual Licensing
// repositories

Core Archives Toolkit

archive-crawler
STABLE
High-performance distributed web crawler optimized for legacy HTML, framesets, and early web protocols.
⭐ 1.2k🍴 340🔧 Rust
html90-renderer
BETA
Headless rendering engine with accurate emulation of Netscape 3.x and IE 4.x layout engines for pixel-perfect preservation.
⭐ 890🍴 210🔧 TypeScript
web-index-db
STABLE
Vector-search optimized PostgreSQL schema for temporal metadata, link graphs, and content classification.
⭐ 760🍴 180🔧 SQL / Python
retro-asset-packer
EXPERIMENTAL
CLI tool for extracting, compressing, and standardizing early web media: MIDI, animated GIFs, and bitmap fonts.
⭐ 540🍴 95🔧 Go
// get involved

How to Contribute

  1. Fork & Clone

    Fork the repository that matches your interest and clone it locally. We use GitHub for issue tracking and PR management.

  2. Setup Environment

    Install dependencies and run the test suite. We require 85%+ coverage for all new features. Documentation is in each repo's README.

  3. Branch & Develop

    Create feature branches from develop. Follow our coding standards and commit conventions. Write clear, contextual commit messages.

  4. Submit PR

    Open a pull request with a detailed description, test results, and screenshots if applicable. Maintainers review within 48 hours.

Read CONTRIBUTING.md →
# Clone and setup
git clone https://github.com/1990wa/archive-crawler.git
cd archive-crawler && cargo build

# Run test suite
cargo test --all-features

# Initialize dev environment
npm install @1990wa/cli -g
1990wa init --mode "archivist"
1990wa sync --replica "local-node"
Code of Conduct: We follow the Contributor Covenant v2.1. Respectful collaboration is mandatory. Report violations to oss@1990webarchive.org
// licensing & governance

Open by Design

We believe digital heritage belongs to the public. Our tools and datasets are explicitly licensed to maximize reuse, modification, and preservation.

MIT License
Software & CLI Tools
All source code, build scripts, and developer utilities are licensed under MIT. Free for commercial and non-commercial use with attribution.
CC BY-SA 4.0
Archived Content & Metadata
Preserved webpages, extracted assets, and structured metadata datasets are shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.
Apache 2.0
Infrastructure & APIs
Core indexing services, deployment configs, and public API schemas use Apache 2.0 to ensure patent protection and enterprise compatibility.
license-check ~ oss
$ 1990wa license --verify --all
✓ archive-crawler: MIT (valid)
✓ html90-renderer: MIT + custom NOTICE
ℹ Content datasets: CC BY-SA 4.0 enforced via .meta tags
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