Inria, a French government research institution, is responsible for the Software Heritage archive. As such, its operations are subject to French law.

Software Heritage may use third-party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to run the Software Heritage services.

The Software Heritage archive collects publicly available source code, and its development history, from a variety of public sources, such as GitHub, GitLab.com or Bitbucket code hosting platforms, package repositories like Npm or PyPI, and open access repositories like HAL or Zenodo. Personal information may be contained in the source code or in the development history, and may hence be collected by the archive.
All archive content is publicly accessible.

GDPR notice

Software Heritage is committed to protecting the personal data it processes. In accordance with GDPR Article 14, we are providing the following information about our data collection.

1. The CEO of Inria acts as the representative for the data controller.
2. The Inria-appointed Data Protection Officer (DPO) can be contacted by email at dpo@inria.fr or by post at: La déléguée à la protection des données Inria, 2004 route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex
3. The purpose of processing your data is to archive all publicly available software in source code form for the long term. This initiative aims to facilitate scientific and historical research related to our shared software legacy.
4. The legal foundation for this processing is the fulfillment of a task carried out in the public interest.
5. The categories of personal data we collect include name, email address, and developer username.
6. Your data is shared with the team managing the Software Heritage infrastructure, hosting providers for our storage solutions, and administrators of the Software Heritage mirrors.
7. Your data is transferred outside of Europe for storage on Software Heritage’s hosting infrastructure.
8. Due to our long-term archiving mission and for historical preservation, your data will be retained indefinitely.
9. You have the right to access your data and request changes to how it is presented in the Software Heritage archive, as outlined in the ‘name change request’ section. However, we cannot alter or delete data in the software development history, as version control systems like Git are designed to maintain an immutable record. For any questions about data processing in this context, please contact the DPO listed above.
10. If, after contacting us, you believe your data protection rights have been violated or that our data processing practices are not compliant with data protection regulations, you can file a complaint with CNIL, the data protection authority for France.
11. This personal data is collected from platforms that facilitate collaborative software development, archiving, and distribution, as well as infrastructures for publishing and disseminating scientific research. The data is sourced from publicly accessible information.
12. This processing does not result in profiling or automated decision-making based on your data.

People change their names and/or email addresses for many reasons. If you want to change the name or email address displayed in the metadata for your code, please contact our Data Protection Officer (see contact information above). Specify the following information  in your request:

• The old email address.
• The new name and/or email address you would like Software Heritage to display in the metadata.

The Software Heritage archive collects publicly available source code and its development history from various public sources. Software Heritage does not conduct any vetting of the collected source code and development history; as a result, any illicit content may inadvertently be included in the Software Heritage archive. In accordance with applicable French law, Software Heritage and Inria shall not be held liable for copyright infringement, provided they offer legitimate rights holders a viable process to request the removal of infringing content. Please note that French law differs from the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in several respects, including the lack of a takedown counter-notice provision.

To request the removal of content from the Software Heritage archive, you must submit a formal request that includes all of the following information:

• Date of request
• I.D.
  • For individuals: first name, surname, occupation, address, nationality, birthplace and birthdate
  • For legal entities: Type of entity, name, headquarter address, legal representative
• Detailed description of the infringing content and its exact location in the Software Heritage archive.
• Reasons for removal, including relevant legal references and a detailed explanation of the alleged infringement.

A copy of any correspondence sent to the original author or editor of the infringing content, requesting removal or modification, or an explanation of why they could not be contacted.

Send your request by email to: takedown@softwareheritage.org

You can also send it by post to the following address:
Inria
Direction aux Affaires Juridiques
Domaine de Voluceau
Rocquencourt B.P. 105
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
France

Code of Conduct

Participation in the development and other activities of Software Heritage is subject to our Code of Conduct. We strive to keep our community welcoming and will not tolerate misconduct of any kind. If you encounter issues while interacting with our development community, please contact us.