Software Heritage - Software Stories
Channel: Software Heritage
Date: 2021-12-02

The Software Stories interface is accessible on stories.softwareheritage.org

Context:
Software Heritage mission is to collect, preserve, and share all software that is publicly available in source code form.
The Software Heritage Acquisition Process (SWHAP) is a protocol to collect,
preserve, curate and present legacy software of historical or scientific relevance.

It was established in 2019 as a result of a collaboration between Software Heritage
(SWH), the University of Pisa and UNESCO.

Recovering legacy source code, where the human readable knowledge
is kept, is a delicate task. It must require a careful methodology to collect and
reconstruct the innovative creation of its authors which might
reveal a major scientific discovery. 

In the SWHAP protocol, different actors have different tasks to collect the
legacy software and all the physical and digital artifacts that are related to the
software itself or its creators. 
One important aspect of preserving the software is also preserving the contextual
information and artifacts in which it was built. The context of the software is a 
window to the past, which is essential to understand the software and its story. 
The story of the software is the one that will be told to the next generations.
Therefore, curating the story around the software is as important as curating the
software itself. 

Software Heritage in collaboration with UNSECO and the sciencestories.io team are
introducing a new way to showcase software, that can be accessible to a wide range 
of software enthusiasts without any technical background, the Software Story. 
The Software Stories web application is an interface where different elements about a software can be visualised, like a digital software museum.  

Credit:
This video was created by the sciencestories.io team:
- Katherine Thornthon
- Kenneth Seals-Nutt 
The Software Stories Beta web app is a the result of a collaboration between the sciencestories.io team, the curators from Pisa University and the Software Heritage team, including:
- Katherine Thornthon (sciencestories.io)
- Kenneth Seals-Nutt (sciencestories.io)
- Carlo Montangero (Pisa)
- Guido Scatena (Pisa)
- Roberto Di Cosmo (SWH)
- Antoine Lambert (SWH)
- Morane Gruenpeter (SWH)
 The Software Stories project was made possible thanks to the support of UNESCO.

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Learn more about Software Heritage: https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Erratum:
In the video at 0.50 that it is said that TAUmus was developed at the University of Pisa. Actually, TAUmus was developed at CNR in Pisa.