ENEA, Software Heritage’s Italian mirror

Software Heritage archives, collects, preserves and makes accessible the source code of all publicly available software in the world, building a modern Library of Alexandria of software source code. Unlike the original Library of Alexandria, whose contents were lost in a fire, Software Heritage has a long term strategy to ensure that its contents will be safeguarded. An important part of this strategy is the development of an international network of mirrors, implemented using a variety of storage technologies, running in various administrative domains, controlled by different institutions, and located in different jurisdictions. The mirror network will provide much higher resilience than multiple copies under our own administrative control.

Today, we’re excited to announce that ENEA (ICT Division of Energy Department) has joined our mirror program and will establish in its research center in Bologna the first Italian mirror of Software Heritage, keeping a full replica of the archive, which now contains more than 6 billion unique source files.

This collaboration with ENEA does not come about by chance: ENEA has a long history in modeling, high performance computing (ENEA Grid Infrastructure – CRESCO) and software development, essential tools to support many fields of knowledge and technology. By hosting a Software Heritage mirror, the ENEA Center in Bologna will not only contribute its long term sustainability: it will also bring its Big Data expertise to study and analyze the “Big Code” contained in this unprecedented library of source codes and algorithms.