The following is a modified excerpt from a Blog by Hedge makers of Canister LTFS software.

What is LTFS?

Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is an open standard. It turns a tape into something that behaves like a filesystem: browse it, copy to it, read it back. Kinda like a hard drive. More importantly, LTFS tapes are self-describing: the index lives on the tape itself. You don't need to know anything about the system that wrote it to read it. Mount a tape years from now with any LTFS-compatible software, and you'll see exactly what's on it.

That's not a small thing. For long-term archiving, it's the whole game.

The spec outlives the vendors

Because LTFS is open, no single company can kill it. IBM could stop shipping LTFS software tomorrow, and the format would survive. The specification is public. Anyone can implement it. Any tool that reads LTFS today will still be able to read LTFS tapes written years from now.  

LTFS is the right answer for new tape archives!