About UNL Archive

Purpose

The UNL Archive is a repository dedicated to preserving and providing access to the materials produced by the Universal Networking Language (UNL) Project, ensuring that the documentation and resources remain accessible for historical, academic, and technical reference. The Archive's mission is archival preservation and public access for research, teaching, reference, and reuse under the licensing and limits described below.

Limitations

All materials are provided “as of 2015”, with no further development or support. They are preserved in their original form, and the UNL Archive does not undertake any further development, maintenance, or technical assistance for archived content. Users should be aware that some components may depend on deprecated technologies or external resources that are no longer maintained.

License & Reuse

All data is released under an Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) Creative Commons license. These resources are preserved as-is for reference and reuse, provided proper credit is given and derivative works are released under the same or a compatible license (CC BY-SA). See CC BY-SA 4.0 for details.

Content

The UNL Archive comprises the following materials:

A concise, introductory overview explaining what UNLweb was, the UNL Program, and its main applications — designed to provide newcomers and researchers with essential contextual understanding.
Access to the original version of UNLweb, except for the Joomla-based interface (previously used for news) and certain features that depend on deprecated external libraries requiring substantial redevelopment. These components remain archived but may not be operational. Core UNLweb functionality, however, is fully preserved: past users can still log in, access their profiles, and retrieve their data; new users can register accounts and contribute to the platform.
Access to the original version of UNLarium — the crowdsourcing environment for the development of language resources — including its data and functionality, except for elements that relied on third-party code no longer maintained. Some interactive or integrated features may therefore be limited, but users can still contribute to dictionaries and grammars, access lexical resources, and explore the archived content.
Access to the original version of UNLwiki, the primary source of project documentation, including UNL Specifications and UNDL Foundation Recommendations for Language Engineering. All preserved content remains available for reading and research, but public editing has been disabled for security reasons.
Access to the original version of VALERIE — the Virtual Learning Environment for UNL — including the ability to obtain new certificates. These certificates are maintained because they are required for user access and functionality, but they are no longer signed by the original project authority and therefore do not carry official validation.

The UNL Archive does not yet include the following components:

UNL dev — the development environment and its tools (IAN, SEAN, EUGENE, NORMA, etc.). These require substantial updates to function properly;
UNL Core — the core framework and its associated modules. This component also requires further work before it can be restored or made operational.
Lily, Keys, and Tut — these were never publicly released and depend on UNLdev and UNLCore for operation, which prevents their inclusion at this stage.
UNL Community — the social networking platform for users and developers. It was scarcely used within UNLweb, does not contain any technical material and is therefore not part of the Archive.
UNL Forum — the discussion and message exchange facility, which was heavily vandalized with spam and has been permanently disabled.
UNL Centre's tools (DeCo, EnCo, Universal Parser, DicBuilder and UW Gate) — these tools are proprietary and were never part of UNLweb.
Other tools and resources developed by partners or third parties that were not directly integrated into UNLweb, UNLarium or UNLdev.

Independence

UNL Archive is a private initiative without any links to the United Nations University, the UNDL Foundation, or any other organization previously involved in the UNL Project. References to those organizations within archived materials are historical and do not imply current affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement.

Contribute / Volunteer

Volunteer work or any form of contribution is welcomed. The Archive is volunteer-run and contributions are appreciated — whether improving metadata, digitizing materials, fixing preservation issues, or helping with technical tasks. If you want to help, please contact: admin@unlarchive.org

Founding, History and Dedication

UNL Archive was created upon a request from Prof. Tarcisio Della Senta, former President of the UNDL Foundation, to preserve the materials of the UNL Project after its closure. The Archive is maintained by Ronaldo Martins, former Language Resources Manager of the UNDL Foundation, in a volunteer capacity.

This Archive is also offered as a tribute to everyone who worked on the UNL Project — in Geneva and around the world — and who shared the vision that the UNL, as depicted in its logo, could one day become the UN Language, the seventh official language of the United Nations, one that would facilitate communication and understanding among all peoples, and which would serve as a technological response to the digital divide and to global language barriers, linguistic imperialism, and language prejudice, as well as to the asymmetry of information and accessibility issues that results from them. While that vision was not realized, the efforts and dedication of all involved deserve recognition and remembrance.

Legal & Technical Notices

Technical and legal note: Materials are preserved in their original form without warranties or committed updates. Before using any component in production (for example, certificates, libraries, or services), verify compatibility, legal status and operational validity.

For license questions, content removal requests, or to submit materials, contact: admin@unlarchive.org.