Towards An Ontology Of Software: A Requirements Engineering Perspective / quote 8 of 28
Broad definitions of software
Osterweil believes that, in addition to com- puter software, there are other kinds of software, such as laws or recipes. In a nutshell, he characterizes software as something non-physical and intangible, which could be executed to manage and control tangible entities [12]. Suber assumes software as an even more general concept, defining software as (physically embodied) patterns which are readable, liftable, and executable by a machine [13]. From this definition, we can derive some extremely unintuitive cases, such as “all circuits deserve the name soft- ware, since they are physical embodiments of patterns, readable and executable by a machine, and liftable. [13]