Inria Fondation
To support improved tracking of academic software development via tools that leverage Software Heritage
Software Heritage (SWH) is an ambitious and pioneering initiative to archive all software source code ever written. Founded by Roberto Di Cosmo with Stefano Zacchiroli and hosted at INRIA in France, the project systematically collects code from software repositories worldwide. SWH now houses over 347 million software projects comprising nearly 24 billion source files. SWH has become integral to France's open science strategy, which explicitly acknowledges software as a key scientific output. Their tracking dashboard and curation tools provide transparency for software created through French research funding. This project will leverage existing SWH infrastructure to directly support the work of university-based Open Source Program Offices. Following a requirements survey, Di Cosmo has developed a plan to generalize the French dashboard, extend the CodeMeta data standard, and dedicate staff to implementation support. This grant will allow SWH, under the supervision of Morane Gruenpeter, to extend its infrastructure to directly benefit other Sloan grantees. The proposed tools address a critical need for scientific software supporters in universities and could significantly lower barriers to entry for new OSPOs, while also enhancing SWH's capabilities for AI model training.