Software as Property and as Writing

Journal Frater 219's Journal: Software as Property and as Writing 3

Journal by Frater 219 on Saturday November 22, 2003 @02:36AM

My last essay here was rather insulting towards the nontechnical user. This one will, therefore, be more sympathetic, taking the user's lack of understanding and turning it to an opportunity.

Many end-users seem to lack a systematic grasp of the concept that programs are something that people write: that every piece of software and every function of that software is something that someone designed and wrote out.

People understand far better the idea that software has owners than that it has authors. They readily accept the idea that some aspect of their Windows computer is owned by Microsoft, but have (understandably!) more difficulty with the idea that the component Microsoft owns is a writing, in its nature more akin to the text of an encyclopedia than to a kitchen gadget -- that it's the product of hundreds of people typing in things that look like math.

The metaphors of software as ordinary property (belonging to its owner, like a lawnmower or a house) and software as writing (created systematically and expressively by its author, like a book) lead one to different sorts of thoughts.

When something belongs to someone else, the everyday law-abiding person sees it as out-of-bounds. We don't mess around with other people's things without their permission! If something about your computer belongs to Microsoft, but you're not sure what that something is, then the computer itself becomes a doubtful and border territory.

This has ill effects for personal computing. A borderland, where the line of demarcation is unclear, is a space from which the meeker and more certainty-seeking neighbor shies back, and into which the more powerful and aggressive neighbor advances. Thus, Microsoft has in many ways taken greater control over the user's computer and left less ownership and control to the user and to other stakeholders such as third-party developers.

At the same time, a borderland is a space where the respective neighbors can foist off assertions of fault onto the other. Flaws in Windows, which Microsoft created, are treated as the user's responsibility to patch rather than as Microsoft's liability for making in the first place. Again, the user, being the less powerful neighbor in the "software as property" metaphor, loses.

In contrast, when we recognize something as a writing, we understand many facts which apply usefully to personal computing:

The writing could have been written differently. The way it is, is not the only way it could have been. The wording of the text is the author's choice. It is the reader's responsibility to understand the text; but this does not absolve the author of responsibility for what the text says.
The writing could contain mistakes. The author is not the final authority on its disposition or correctness; the real world is. If the writing presents itself as practical, but contains errors which lead to those who depend upon it coming to harm, the author and publisher are liable (at least in part) for that harm.
The text before us is not the same as its subject matter. We could read some other author's words on the same subject, and learn many of the same things. Another writing might be more accurate, more accessible, and more worthwhile. Many authors can write on the same subject without wronging one another in so doing.
Some texts are collaborative; they belong jointly to all of their authors.
Some texts are written clearly, so it is evident what the author means and whether his claims are correct. Others are written obscurely, in a way which is hard to understand, much harder to to verify. For practical purposes such as the conduct of business, clear and verifiable writing is often more valuable than elaborate or pretty writing.
It isn't right to take someone else's writing and claim it's our own. That would be plagiarism -- not the same thing as theft of ordinary property, but still wrong. Plagiarism is chiefly a problem that concerns other authors, not readers; reading or referring to an article that was plagiarized is not itself plagiarism.

Software as property; software as writing -- these are two different metaphors. Software itself is neither property in the same sense that a lawn mower is property, nor is it writing in the same sense that Homer's Odyssey is writing. It is something different from either of these.

However, we may ask: Which of these metaphors gives us a better grip on the subject? Which leads to greater practical understanding? Moreover, society's view of software is still nebulous, since the ordinary person has no good idea of what it is. As a result, we may ask further: Which is the way we want software to be?

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