The environmental impact of digital technology has become a major concern, with a measurable and growing environmental footprint (particularly carbon). A significant part of this impact comes from the manufacture of equipment, which is often replaced prematurely, partly due to software-induced obsolescence. “Programs slow down faster than hardware improves” is how N. Wirth's law is formulated. Every computer or smartphone user experiences this during the many software updates, until the computer or phone can no longer support the demands of the applications.
Unfortunately, this law has never been formalized or measured experimentally; that is the objective of this project.

More specifically, the objective is to develop metrics on the evolution of the operational complexity of software across its different versions. These metrics can then be used in software workshops and possibly meet regulatory requirements: “my software must not increase in complexity by more than 7% per year” in order to increase the lifespan of hardware, which accounts for the majority of the environmental footprint of digital technology.

In practice, this will involve developing a methodology for tools of increasing complexity, using usage scenarios to measure operational complexity.
This method will be applied to one or more use cases, such as an open-source word processing scenario (LibreOffice) and a web-based scenario.