UNESCO and Inria (the French Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique) stepped up their efforts to forge stronger partnerships in support of their Software Heritage project.
At a meeting organized on 4 February at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, some 30 experts heard presentations on the progress made so far on the implementation of the project. They also reflected on the next steps and strategic directions for the project.
Representatives came from:
- the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation,
- Academia, including the University of Paris, the University of Pisa and the University of Bologna, and
- the private sector, including such companies and organizations as Microsoft, Intel, Société Générale, Nokia, GitHub and Huawei as well as the Open Invention Network.
In his opening remarks, Fackson Banda, chief of UNESCO's Documentary Heritage Unit, highlighted the Organization's commitment to the Software Heritage project through its Memory of the World Programme. He explained how the project reinforced UNESCO's effort at preserving digital heritage as a key aspect of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adding that the Organization had implemented several activities in this regard.
Roberto Di Cosmo, Director of Software Heritage at Inria, took the participants through the project's milestones, including the recently established collaboration with the GitHub Archive programme. He also highlighted increased support from Microsoft Azure.
Huawei and Open Invention Network, who are among the latest to join the Software Heritage community, stressed the importance of promoting the participation of key industry players, emphasizing the relevance of the knowledge preserved in the Software Heritage archive. This point was echoed by several other participants, who agreed that Software Heritage provides a unique view into the current and coming trends in software development.
Other participants saw the Software Heritage Archive as an opportunity for greater recognition of companies investing in and contributing towards open source software, particularly given the fact that an increasing number of companies are themselves powered by open source software. Such recognition, they argued, would help pave the way for increased social value of open source software.
In summing up, Di Cosmo highlighted the fact that one of the Software Heritage project's goal was to build a sustainable research infrastructure for software as a pillar for open science. In this regard, several participants referred to the Paris Call on Software as Heritage for Sustainable Development, suggesting the need to enhance connections with national and supranational bodies, such as the government agencies and the European Commission.
The Software Heritage Archive, pioneered by Inria, opened its doors to the world in 2018 during a meeting at UNESCO Headquarters. As of February 2020, the archive boasted more than 91 million software projects. UNESCO has supported this project since 2017, when it signed a partnership agreement with Inria.
