Building the Universal Archive of Source Code

Software is becoming the fabric that binds our personal and social lives, embodying a vast part of the technological knowledge that powers our industry and fuels innovation. Software is a pillar of most scientific research activities in all fields, from mathematics to physics, from chemistry to biology, from finance to social sciences. Software is also an essential mediator for accessing any digital information. In short, a rapidly increasing part of our collective knowledge is embodied in, or dependent on, software artifacts. Our ability to design, use, understand, adapt, and evolve systems and devices on which our lives have come to depend relies on our ability to understand, adapt, and evolve the source code of the software that controls them.