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I've consistently ran into open source projects, different kind of archives and data that I've just taken for granted that they are there, and subsequently been reminded that they can be taken away just like that without warning. Now I save and maintain everything that is important to me myself without relying on them existing elsewhere on someone else's computer.

How does this differ from the deliberate saving mentioned in the article? I can't reliably tell what piece of data it is that will be important, out of the whole collection maybe a couple percent has ever been called upon, but those few percent are very, very valuable.

How long should one maintain the copies then? Well the oldest record to still save a bit over $10K in cost is well over 30 years old data, while archiving it has only cost an aggregate of a few dozen bucks. So I'd say just don't get rid of it.