Software Heritage: Why and how should a library of source code be established

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Software Heritage: why and how should a library of source code be establishedSoftware programs are technical objects whose history has not been studied in a significant way. They are omnipresent today not only in every sector of the economy but also in daily activities in the private and public sphere. Despite their importance, they are also very fragile as a result of their rapid obsolescence, their exponentially growing numbers and their own specific individual characteristics that are a consequence of the very key to their existence – their source code. The Software Heritage project has been launched by the French Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) with a view to collecting source codes and preserving them within a freely accessible archive. This initiative was supported by UNESCO and a convention was signed to initiate cooperative actions for the preservation and sharing of software source codes.