The presentation focuses on an exhibition organised by Software Heritage, a non-profit organisation dedicated to collecting and preserving source code, with support from Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, as well as from UNESCO. I was honoured to be part of the Exhibition Committee and thus contribute to the creation of this pathbreaking event.
The concept of the exhibition was based on the premise that source code holds rich layers of meaning and reflects the historical, social and cultural context of its creation. Following a competitive call for poster proposals on source code released under a free open source license, the exhibition committee selected fifteen proposals. The selected posters were exhibited at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in January 2026.
The exhibition was organised around three interpretative axes: Source Code as Historical Testimony, Source Code as Mirror of Society, and Source Code as Cultural Artefact. Following its Paris première, the collection of posters was planned as an exhibition travelling to several European venues, including the Sorbonne University and the Cité des Sciences et de l’ Industrie in Paris, as well as the SFSCON in Bolzano. All exhibition materials are openly published under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license, enabling institutions worldwide to independently host, replicate, or even expand the collection and thus foster accessibility and global dialogue on digital heritage.
