Shane Coughlan

View the original version of this article on LinkedIn

An introduction from Shane Coughlan, General Manager at OpenChain Project:

Our colleagues over at Software Heritage have long worked towards creating a universal archive of all software. Part of this work relates to identifying software effectively, and to accomplish this they developed the SoftWare Hash IDentifier specification, which has now been released an international standard. You will find it as ISO/IEC 18670 via the ISO website.

Because of the potential of this new standard to positively impact the global open source supply chain, and to help address compliance matters of all types, we want to ensure our community is fully aware of the release, its meaning, and how to learn more.

A few words from Roberto Di Cosmo, Director at Software Heritage:

A major milestone has been reached in the landscape of digital infrastructure: the Software Hash Identifier (SWHID) has officially been published on April 23rd 2025 as the ISO/IEC international standard 18670! 🎉 🔗 Official ISO Listing 📘 Free Public Specification

A Universal Identifier for Software

Inspired by well established practice in distributed software development, almost ten years ago Software Heritage created a “Software Heritage Identifier” that is used in its archive to track over 50 billion software artifact. Today, this identifier schema has now grown into a globally recognized, community-driven standard. Rebranded as the Software Hash Identifier, SWHID is designed for universal adoption across archives, regulatory frameworks, research, industry, and beyond.

This name shift reflects a deeper transformation: from an internal archival tool to a public digital infrastructure for all—a way to uniquely and verifiably reference software artifacts across contexts and borders.

Why It Matters

Software is at the core of innovation, but referencing it reliably has always been a challenge. SWHID addresses this by offering:

• 🧾 Intrinsic, verifiable, and immutable identifiers
• 🔍 Long-term traceability of code, even if moved or renamed
• 📚 Reproducibility in science and industry
• 🛡️ Support for compliance and cybersecurity regulation

With the adoption of ISO/IEC 18670, we now have a globally accepted framework for identifying software—just as we have ISBNs for books or DOIs for papers.

Community at the Core

This success is the result of years of collaboration within the broader software preservation and cybersecurity community. The journey included:

• The original development by Software Heritage
• Open community dialogue in the swhid-discuss forum
• Stewardship of the ISO fast-track process by the Joint Development Foundation
• A dedicated core team dedicated to the maintenance of the specification

This is a shared major acheivement—for everyone committed to making software a first-class, preservable, and referenceable citizen of our digital ecosystem.

SWHID in Action: Strengthening Cybersecurity

Software traceability is increasingly critical to regulatory compliance and cyber resilience. Our recent whitepaper outlines how SWHIDs contribute to this vision:

📄 Software Identification for Cybersecurity: Survey and Recommendations for Regulators 🖇️ Download PDF 🔍 HAL Repository Version

This work supports efforts like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act by providing a concrete, open standard for identifying software components.

SWHID in Action: Enabling Reproducibility in Open Science

In scientific research, reproducibility depends on more than just data—it relies on exactly replicating the software used in analyses. SWHIDs provide a rock-solid way to archive and reference the precise version of code used in experiments.

Explore the guidelines on how to archive and cite software with SWHID to support reproducible science: 🔗 How to archive and reference code

And see how the integration with functional package managers like Guix or Nix allows to reach long term reproducible builds.

SWHID in Action: Promoting Transparency in AI

As AI systems become increasingly influential, the demand for transparency in the data and software used to train them is growing. SWHIDs offer a solution by enabling verifiable references to source code, contributing to more accountable and auditable AI.

Read Software Heritage’s position on AI transparency and the importance of proper referencing: 🧠 SWH Statement on Large Language Models for Code

What’s Next?

The SWHID journey doesn’t end here. Now that it’s an international standard, we invite everyone—developers, educators, researchers, policy makers—to adopt it, build on it, and share it.

✅ Explore the spec on swhid.org or in the 🔗 Official ISO Listing 🌐 Visit the official site: swhid.org 📬 Include it in your toolchains and supply chain policy

Together, we’ve transformed a powerful idea into a global asset. Here’s to a future where all software is identifiable, referenceable, and preserved.

#SoftwareHashIdentifier #SWHID #DigitalInfrastructure #Cybersecurity #OpenStandards #ISO #SoftwarePreservation #OpenSource #DigitalSustainability

The OpenChain Project took part in the fourth Software Heritage Community Workshop, held in Paris on January 30, 2025.

This poster highlights some of the outcomes from our collaborative workgroup, where a diverse range of stakeholders (OpenChain / CERN / Software Heritage / Academia) discussed how to measure impact when we extract knowledge from software assets:

View the original: https://zenodo.org/records/15230207

What is Software Heritage? It is an international non-profit infrastructure supported by UNESCO and Inria, collects, preserves, and shares all software source code for industry, research, culture, and society. They recently released ISO/IEC 18670, which specifies the identifier used to ensure all software, everywhere, can be tracked.

The OpenChain Telco Work Group has released Version 1.1 of the Telco SBOM Guide, an industry-specific but easily adaptable guide to addressing SBOM quality in the supply chain. Learn more about the release and what it means in their latest meeting.

You may also be interested in seeing the cross-industry guide discussion this has inspired in our SBOM Study Group. A recording of the SBOM Study Group April meeting is also available online.

Watch the Meeting:

Be part of this:

Everyone is welcome to be part of this study group! OpenChain has free, open access to all its work groups and study groups. Just turn up, and listen in, and contribute comments, ideas and suggestions.

✉️ We have a dedicated mailing list:
https://lists.openchainproject.org/g/telco

💻 We have a dedicated GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Telco-WG

You are also welcome to participate in any of our other working groups around the world:

• https://openchainproject.org/participate

As always, we focused on the question of “how do we use SBOMs in production, large-scale and complex supply chains?” We are dealing with the reality of supply chains with many participants who have different levels of skill, use different formats, and perhaps follow different regulations or policies.

In this meeting, we looked at the question of how someone could approach building a cross-industry, cross-format guide to SBOM Quality. The mental model was “how would we use the Telco SBOM Quality Guide as a starting point,” and our Japanese sub-group prepared a proof-of-concept.

Learn More About This Study Group:

Our SBOM Study Group brings all our various SBOM-related activities together and helps answer the question of “how do we use SBOMs in production, large-scale and complex supply chains?” Our original kick-off call has all the details.

Get Involved:

Everyone is welcome to be part of this study group! OpenChain has free, open access to all its work groups and study groups. Just turn up, and listen in, and contribute comments, ideas and suggestions.

✉️ We have a dedicated mailing list:
https://lists.openchainproject.org/g/sbom

💻 We have a dedicated GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/SBOM-sg

We held our regular workshop for the OpenChain AI Work Group on April 1st. It was a two-hour session focused on finalizing a Guide to AI Bill of Material Compliance in the Supply Chain. The draft is reaching its final stages, and is expected to be ready by June.

The Draft Guide:

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g1kdmx1bDlQ0feSeW-ZY5JRFAF-HC30a/edit

Watch the Recording:

Track This Work:

You can follow and contribute to the work of the OpenChain AI Work Group through its dedicated mailing list. This is open to everyone regardless of industry vertical or speciality. You will find it here:

• https://lists.openchainproject.org/g/ai

Attend Future Meetings:

You can find and get the dial-in details for all future AI Work Group meetings from our participate page here:

• https://www.openchainproject.org/participate

Our Agenda:

• Update on the Tooling Capability Map (version 1.6.3).
• A look at mkDocs and Tags as a way to organize our documentation
• An update on the OpenChain and Friends event in Stuttgart, April 7th, 8th and 9th

Watch the Recording:

Learn More About This Work Group:

Our Tooling Work Group looks at the question of “how do we automate compliance process review, and can we do it using open source solutions?”

Get Involved:

✉️ We have a dedicated mailing list:
https://groups.io/g/oss-based-compliance-tooling

💻 We have a dedicated GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/Open-Source-Compliance/Sharing-creates-value