Software Heritage 2025 Symposium and Summit

The annual Software Heritage Summit and Symposium, set to take place on January 29, 2025, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, provides a unique platform for academia, industry, and policymakers to discuss critical issues at the intersection of software, artificial intelligence, and society.

This year’s Symposium focuses on four key themes: 

Cybersecurity and regulation
In the era of heightened regulation, including the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), ensuring a robust and open infrastructure for software preservation and traceability is vital. Stricter global cybersecurity and compliance requirements pose challenges to the software ecosystem but also open pathways for innovation. Software Heritage, in partnership with UNESCO, provides the transparency, reliability, and long-term accessibility required to navigate these regulatory landscapes. This track will explore the intersection of policy, regulation, and technology, highlighting how open infrastructures safeguard public and private digital ecosystems.

Open and transparent AI
AI’s transformative potential must be harnessed responsibly to serve the entire global community, particularly regions in the Global South. Transparency in AI development and deployment is crucial for building trust, ensuring ethical practices, and reducing inequality. Software Heritage, through its preservation of source code and partnership with initiatives like StarCoder2, provides a foundational infrastructure for creating and sharing open AI models. These efforts enable equitable access to AI technologies, supporting innovation in underserved regions and fostering inclusive global progress. Discussions in this track will explore strategies to ensure that transparent, open, and efficient AI models are accessible to everyone, regardless of geographic location or economic status.

Open Science
The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science underscores the importance of non-commercial digital infrastructures for preserving and disseminating scientific knowledge. Software Heritage embodies this vision by ensuring community-driven, long-term stewardship of software source code as first-class research outputs. This session will delve into how Open Science practices, supported by Software Heritage, foster collaboration, accelerate discovery and promote scientific endeavors globally.

Cultural preservation and education
Software source code is a unique form of cultural and documentary heritage, with immense educational value. Recognizing software creators, including contributions from women and minorities, is critical to capturing the full narrative of digital innovation. Building on the 2019 Paris Call and UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme, this track emphasizes the importance of software preservation for empowering citizens and cultivating digital literacy, ensuring inclusive participation in today’s digital society.

Schedule for the 2025 Symposium & Summit

9:00 – 12:30  Software Heritage Summit (members – invite only.)

14:30 – 19:00 Software Heritage Symposium
The conference program is subject to change, and additional speakers will be announced soon.

14:30 Welcome address and opening remarks
Tawfik Jelassi, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, Unesco
Bruno Sportisse, CEO, Inria
Roberto Di Cosmo, Director, Software Heritage

15:00 Panel on cyber security and regulations
Moderator: Simon Phipps, AlmaLinux OS Foundation
Mike Milinkovitch, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation
Olivier Zendra, tenured researcher, Inria, HiPEAC
Carolina Lavatelli, CTO & founder, Internet of Trust

15:30 Tech talk(s)
Stefano Zacchiroli, co-founder, Software Heritage

15:40 Panel on AI transparency and regulation
Moderator: Aurélie Simard, Executive Director, Paris Center of Expertise for International Cooperation on AI
Gaspard Demur, Deputy Head of Unit, EU AI Office
Agata Ferretti, AI Alliance Lead for Europe, IBM Research
Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director, Open Source Initiative
Fabio Porto, senior researcher, Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica
Nayat Sanchez-Pi, Director, Inria Chile Center
Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

16:30 Tech talk(s)
Building a Code Commons, Software Heritage

16:40 Coffee break

17:10 Open science panel
Moderator: Morane Gruenpeter, head of Open Science, Software Heritage
Kazutsuna Yamaji, director, Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform (RCOS), National Institute of Informatics (NII)
Micha Moskovicm, INSPIRE product manager, CERN
Sarah Cohen Boulakia, professor, Deputy Director DATAIA, Université Paris Saclay
Nicolas Fressengeas, Open Science Officer, International Affairs, Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR)
Lorena Barba, Director, Open Source Program Office, The George Washington University

17:50 Tech talk(s)

Petr Knoth, full professor, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

Violaine Louvet, ADAC Université Grenobles Alpes, CNRS

18:10 Panel: Memory of the world

Moderator: Fackson Banda, Chief, Documentary Heritage Unit, UNESCO
Documentary Heritage and Artificial Intelligence: Approaches and Considerations, by  Anthea Seles, based on her desk research for UNESCO MoW Programme
Leveraging the ‘Hidden Collections Africa’ through sustainable infrastructure, by Charles Henry, President, Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR).
Preserving and Interpreting Software History at the Computer History Museum, by David C. Brock, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Computer History Museum

18:50 Closing remarks

Roberto Di Cosmo

The Software Heritage Symposium 2025 provides a unique platform to address the critical challenges and opportunities at the nexus of software, AI, and societal progress. Through dialogue and collaboration, the event aims to reinforce the role of open-source infrastructure in fostering a secure, transparent, and equitable digital future.

Sign up to attend in person or online through this form:
https://framaforms.org/swh-2025-symposium-public-registration-form-1734093081