A large part of the technical and scientific knowledge that is being developed today resides in software. The preservation of this universal body of knowledge has become as essential as preserving research articles and data sets.
As an extremely valuable service to the research community, we will search for, collect, organize, preserve and make easily available all the software.
Software in all sciences
Software has become a pillar of sciences, ubiquitous in all its fields. Deep technical and scientific knowledge is present in software artifacts.
Programs may be major scientific breakthroughs and beyond the algorithms, typically described in articles, the source code provides possibly important details, removing ambiguities that may exist in intuitive descriptions.
This knowledge is important, and can turn to be conveniently reused in future research.
Software in computer science
Compared to other disciplines, computer science is a relatively new subject of study, and software is one of its most essential components.
Software Heritage will provide a uniform, universal archive of all the source code, and will unleash the potential of all software studies.
Running software, again and again
Software preservation is a pillar of reproducibility, because software is used in essential ways during all phases of research in all fields of science. To be able to reproduce an experiment, knowing the exact version of the software used is essential.
Software Heritage will ensure availability and traceability of software, the missing vertex in the triangle of scientific preservation.
You can help
The universal software archive we are building will provide fundamental services to the global scientific community. Building it poses relevant scientific challenges.
You can contribute to the mission of Software Heritage by participating in our research activities.