Since December 13, at the ENEA Research Center in Bologna, the first Italian Mirror of Software Heritage, namely the archive that collects, preserves and makes accessible the source code of all publicly available software in the world, has gone into operation and is available to the public; an international, non-profit initiative of great cultural, social and scientific relevance, promoted by INRIA, the French institute for research on information technology and automation, in cooperation with UNESCO. "We are proud to welcome ENEA," says Professor Di Cosmo, Director of Software Heritage, "as the first European Institutional Mirror of Software Heritage, and we look forward to exploring together the opportunities opened by this collaboration. The goal of this digital library is to preserve a heritage that is an expression of the ingenuity, intelligence and culture of the modern world. Anyone who wants to, can browse inside this very special archive, among codes and algorithms that solve mathematical problems and reproduce models of complex systems according to the way of science and technology dictated by the advent of computers. For example, navigating in this sea of codes, one can come across the code that guided the Apollo11 on-board computer that took man to the moon 50 years ago or TAUmus, one of the world's first software for computer music, created in the 1970s thanks to the collaboration between a musician, maestro Pietro Grossi, a pioneer of electronic music, and researchers at the University National Center for Electronic Computing in Pisa. Specifically, the ENEA Center in Bologna will maintain a mirror, in Italian “specchio”, that is, a replica of the entire archive, which now numbers more than 17 billion source programs; the intent is to ensure its security and continuous availability.
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