Re: licensing of XMPP specifications
Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
> Today the "software" comprising the carefully planned interpretive
> routines, compilers, and other aspects of automative programming are
> at least as important to the modern electronic calculator as its
> "hardware" of tubes, transistors, wires, tapes and the like.
> [ from http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_7_31_00.html ]
>
> Note the "carefully planned _interpretive_ (etc)" and "aspects of
> automative programming" parts of Tukey's definition. At least in that
> early, contrasted-with-hardware meaning, software was definitely not a
> general term for information, but a name for the instructions that
> produced function and results from a computer. Is there some earlier
> use of the word that is broader?
Software seems to have been created for those cases when the then-popular
'stored program' was inadequate. I think the contrast with hardware
dominates the list of examples in the article.
Anyway, for this case, note the 'other aspects' part - is a specification
an aspect of programming? I think so.
I suspect the context of the article itself makes this more obvious and
motivated my post to this list on 2003-03-22 about the above article,
but I no longer have access to JStor to check it.
Regards,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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