Software
Together with UNESCO, Inria is consolidating the World Software Library, a strategic infrastructure for digital sovereignty.
Date:
Changed on 03/02/2026
In an international context marked by increasing geopolitical tensions, risks of data access restrictions, and growing technological dependencies in the digital sphere, Inria and the Inria Foundation, in partnership with UNESCO, are promoting and developing the global software library: Software Heritage, an open and sustainable infrastructure dedicated to the preservation, traceability, and reuse of source code.
Ten years after its launch, the library has established itself as a strategic foundation for digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and the development of reliable and transparent artificial intelligence. Designed as a neutral and non-commercial archive, Software Heritage addresses a challenge that has become central: ensuring sustainable access to source code, an essential component of scientific research, innovation, public services, and the digital economy.
Ten years after its launch, the library has established itself as a strategic foundation for digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and the development of reliable and transparent artificial intelligence. Designed as a neutral and non-commercial archive, Software Heritage addresses a challenge that has become central: ensuring sustainable access to source code, an essential component of scientific research, innovation, public services, and the digital economy.
A rapidly growing reference infrastructure
Since 2016, in close partnership with UNESCO, Software Heritage has experienced unprecedented growth and is now the largest collection of source code, covering all areas of software and all regions of the world.
Bruno Sportisse, CEO of Inria:
For ten years now, Inria has been working in partnership with UNESCO to build digital commons for humanity through its support for Software Heritage, which is hosted by the Inria Foundation. This library has become a critical infrastructure for our digital sovereignty, as it protects us from the risk of losing our memory or one day being deprived of access to source codes. It allows us to conduct research based on verifiable data, track the impact of security breaches, and contribute to the training of foundational models for AI.
Through the use of persistent and verifiable identifiers, standardized at the international level, it guarantees the provenance, integrity, and traceability of software, meeting the growing demands of open science, cybersecurity, and digital regulation.
Key figures:
Between 2021 and 2026, Software Heritage more than doubled its volumes, confirming its role as a strategic global infrastructure for software preservation and traceability.
Roberto Di Cosmo, founder and director of Software Heritage
Software Heritage was born out of a simple conviction: source code is an essential component of our collective memory and critical infrastructure. In ten years, thanks to the remarkable commitment of the team, the constant support of Inria, the partnership with UNESCO, and the trust of our public and private sponsors, we have built a global, open, and neutral infrastructure that serves everyone. Today, Software Heritage is no longer just an archive: it is an operational foundation for digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, open science, and responsible artificial intelligence. The next decade will be one of scaling up, to ensure the long-term access, traceability, and resilience of software, humanity's digital common good.
Towards a new strategic phase of digital resilience
Faced with increasing constraints on access to data and software—whether geopolitical, economic, or regulatory—Software Heritage provides a reliable and independent anchor point. By ensuring sustainable access to verifiable software resources, the library supports current and future work in critical areas such as cybersecurity, software chain analysis, and artificial intelligence model training.
Henri Verdier, Executive Director of the Inria Foundation:
Like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and so many others, Software Heritage is one of humanity's great digital commons. It is not only a living archive of our shared history, which must be protected from capture and made accessible to all, but also a strategic resource for shared digital sovereignty. Coupled with the possibilities of AI, its potential for research and innovation is incalculable.
After a decade devoted to building and consolidating the archive, the project is entering a new strategic phase. The goal? To transform the heritage software archive into an operational foundation for global digital resilience, in particular through:
- the development of open, interoperable, and distributed infrastructures;
- the securing of the software chain and the traceability of dependencies;
- the provision of reliable code corpora for transparent and inclusive AI;
- the promotion of software as a digital common good, in line with UNESCO's priorities.
By renewing its partnership with UNESCO, Inria reaffirms its commitment to the universal right of access to knowledge and the preservation of software as a global public good. As it enters its second decade, Software Heritage confirms its role as a benchmark infrastructure serving the global software heritage, combining scientific excellence, open infrastructures, and institutional leadership to contribute to a safer, more transparent, and more inclusive digital world, in line with the values and priorities upheld by UNESCO, Inria, and the Inria Foundation.
[i] The Software Heritage Identifier (SWHID) is an intrinsic and cryptographically verifiable identifier that is now standardized under ISO/IEC 18670. The SWHID enables a reliable link to be established between source code, software bill of materials (SBOMs), audits, and regulatory frameworks such as the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2, regardless of vendors, platforms, or registries.