Towards An Ontology Of Software: A Requirements Engineering Perspective / quote 19 of 28
Irmak on the artifactual nature of software
A different approach to account for the artifactual nature of software is taken by Irmak [8], also acknowledged by Ray Turner in his recent, comprehensive entry on the philosophy of Computer Science published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [19]. According to Irmak, people have tried to understand software (which he considers as synonymous with program) in terms of algorithm, code, copy and process, but none of these notions can be identified with software, since - due to its artifactual nature - software has different identity criteria. Therefore, a program, which for him is synony- mous with software, is different from code. We share very much Irmak’s intuitions, as well as the methodology he adopts to motivate his conclusions, based on analysis of the conditions under which a software maintains its identity despite change.