  Academic institutions and their staff use, adapt and create software. We're
thinking of business tools used to carry out their mission: teaching management
(Moodle) or subject teaching support (such as Maxima for formal calculus), for
example. We're talking about software resulting from research work, designed by
a researcher or a team as part of a research project (funded by ANR, Europe,
etc. or not) or as a research service for a third party. These projects can
last for decades (such as the Coq program proof assistant project, or the GPAC
multimedia content distribution platform).We discuss why this software is
produced, with what resources, the interest that institutions derive from it,
what we call the ''valorization'' of software resulting from scientific
research. The latter is multifaceted, as are the missions of scientific
institutions: social value (contribution to the world heritage of knowledge),
financial value (contracts), economic value (business creation), scientific
value (publication), image value (visibility of the institution among target
audiences: students, researchers, companies, prescribers).
