89 líneas
4.4 KiB
HTML
89 líneas
4.4 KiB
HTML
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<title>The Software Heritage intiative: A comprehensive archive of Free Software code</title>
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<h1>Software Heritage initiative to create an archive of Free Software code</h1>
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<p>The Free Software Foundation Europe protects users,
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companies and institutions from technological abuse by promoting the use
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of Free Software. Now there is a project that protects the code used in
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Free Software itself and promised to preserve it for the future: Inria
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presents the Software Heritage initiative.</p>
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<p>The importance of software in the modern world cannot be overstated.
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Software is at the crux of all contemporary technological development and
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has become essential for all areas of scientific research. Software plays
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a pivotal role in our daily lives, our industries and our society. Software
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has become the reflection of our technological, scientific and cultural
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progress.</p>
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<p>However, software is prone to disappear, either because it stops being
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profitable, or projects get cancelled, or the code is deemed obsolete and
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gets erased, or is left to fade on storage that physically degrades over
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time.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.softwareheritage.org/">Software Heritage</a>
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initiative is created and funded by <a href="http://www.inria.fr/en/">Inria</a>.
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It collects programs, applications and snippets of code distributed under
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free licenses from a wide variety of active and defunct sources, its aim
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being to protect code from sinking into oblivion. The distributed and
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redundant back-end hardens the system against a potentially disastrous
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losses of data and guarantees its availability for users.</p>
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<p>Users can check if a certain file exists within the system and propose
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new sources the Software Heritage engine can explore in search of more
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code to store. Soon users will also be able to find out where the code
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originated from using the Provenance information feature, browse the stored
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code, run full-text searches on all files, and download the content.</p>
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<p>The Heritage aimes to store all Free Software, in other words, software that
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can be used, studied, adapted and shared freely with others; and this is
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because the Software Heritage initiative relies on being able to share
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the software it stores. The Software Heritage website is designed to be
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a useful tool for professionals, scientists, educators and end-users.
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Users must be allowed to re-use the code in other products, cutting development
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time and costs; engineers should be able to discover how others solved
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certain problems; or compare the efficiency of different solutions to the
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same problem. And, of course, researchers must have explicit permission
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to study the evolution of code over time. This is only possible if the code
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is distributed under a Free and Open Source license.</p>
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<blockquote>Matthias Kirschner, President of the Free Software Foundation
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Europe, says: "Software is the most important cultural technology of
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today's society; it frames what we can and what we cannot do. Software
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shapes our communication and culture, our economy, education and research,
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as well as politics. It is important to preserve our collective knowledge
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about how software has influenced humankind. Collecting source code makes
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Software Heritage a valuable resource to understand how our society worked
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at any given time, and to build upon knowledge from humankind."</blockquote>
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<p>The Software Heritage intiative ensures today's code will be around
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for everybody in the future.</p>
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<h3>About Inria</h3>
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<p><a href="http://www.inria.fr/en/">Inria</a>, the French National Institute
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for computer science and applied mathematics, promotes "scientific excellence
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for technology transfer and society". Graduates from the world's top universities,
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Inria's 2,700 employees rise to the challenges of digital sciences. With
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this open, agile model, Inria is able to explore original approaches with
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its partners in industry and academia and provide an efficient response
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to the multidisciplinary and application challenges of the digital transformation.
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Inria transfers expertise and research results to companies (startups,
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SMEs and major groups) in fields as diverse as healthcare, transport, energy,
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communications, security and privacy protection, smart cities and the factory
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of the future.</p>
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