Lectio Magistralis at the GSSI on Software Heritage by Stefano Zacchiroli

Schedule: 24 April, 11.30 – 12.30 
Place: GSSI – Main Lecture Hall, v. Francesco Crispi 7

Speaker: Stefano Zacchiroli
IRIF, Université Paris Diderot / Inria / IRILL, Paris, France
https://upsilon.cc/~zack/

Title: “Software Heritage: source code analysis at the scale of the world”

Abstract: The Software Heritage project has assembled the largest existing archive of publicly available software source code and associated development history, for more than 5 billion unique source code files and 1 billion unique commits, coming from more than 80 million development projects.

In this talk we will review the project background, current status, and future directions with a focus on its research applications. In particular, we will discuss (1) using the Software Heritage archive as a research object, allowing to study software evolution, patterns, and development dynamics at an unprecedented scale; and (2) how Software Heritage is a fundamental building block for open science, and how it contributes to increasing accessibility and reproducibility of scientific source code. We will conclude the talk with a brief overview of the research challenges that need to be overcome to fulfill the Software Heritage mission.