software

n. Computer Science.

The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.

A set of instructions that cause a computer to perform one or more tasks. The set of instructions is often called a program or, if the set is particularly large and complex, a system. Computers cannot do any useful work without instructions from software; thus a combination of software and hardware (the computer) is necessary to do any computerized work. A program must tell the computer each of a set of minuscule tasks to perform, in a framework of logic, such that the computer knows exactly what to do and when to do it. See also Computer programming.

Programs are written in programming languages, especially designed to facilitate the creation of software. In the 1950s, programming languages were numerical languages easily understood by computer hardware; often, programmers said they were writing such programs in machine language.

Machine language was cumbersome, error-prone, and hard to change. In the latter 1950s, assembler (or assembly) language was invented. Assembler language was nearly the same as machine language, except that symbolic (instead of numerical) operations and symbolic addresses were used, making the code considerably easier to change.

The programmable aspects of computer hardware have not changed much since the 1950s. Computers still have numerical operations, and numerical addresses by which data may be accessed. However, programmers now use high-level languages, which look much more like English than a string of numbers or operation codes. See also Numbering systems; Numerical representation (computers); Programming languages.

Well-known programming languages include Basic, Java, and C. Basic has been modified into Visual Basic, a language useful for writing the portion of a program that the user “talks to” (i.e., the user interface or graphical user interface or GUI). Java is especially useful for creating software that runs on a network of computers. C and C++ are powerful but complex languages for writing such software as systems software and games. See also Human-computer interaction; Local-area networks; Wide-area networks.

Packaged software such as word processors, spreadsheets, graphics and drawing tools, email systems, and games are widely available and used. Some software packages are enormous; for example, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can be used by companies to perform almost all of their so-called backoffice software work. See also Computer graphics; Electronic mail; Video games; Word processing.

Systems software is necessary to support the running of an application program. Operating systems are needed to link the machine-dependent needs of a program with the capabilities of the machine on which it runs. Compilers translate programs from high-level languages into machine languages. Database programs keep track of where and how data are stored on the various storage facilities of a typical computer, and simplify the task of entering data into those facilities or retrieving the data. Networking software provides the support necessary for computers to interact with each other, and with data storage facilities, in a situation where multiple computers are necessary to perform a task, or when software is running on a network of computers (such as the Internet or the World Wide Web). See also Database management system; Internet; Operating system; World Wide Web.

Business applications software processes transactions, produces paychecks, and does the myriad of other tasks that are essential to running any business. Roughly two-thirds of software applications are in the business area.

Scientific and engineering software satisfies the needs of a scientific or engineering user to perform enterprise-specific tasks. Because scientific and engineering tasks tend to be very enterprise-specific, there has been no generalization of this application area analogous to the that of the ERP for backoffice business systems. The scientific-engineering application usually is considered to be in second place only to business software in terms of software products built.

Edutainment software instructs (educates) or plays games with (entertains) the user. Such software often employs elaborate graphics and complex logic. This is one of the most rapidly growing software application areas, and includes software to produce special effects for movies and television programs.

Real-time software operates in a time-compressed, real-world environment. Although most software is in some sense real-time, since the users of modern software are usually interacting with it via a GUI, real-time software typically has much shorter time constraints. For example, software that controls a nuclear reactor must make decisions and react to its environment in minuscule fractions of a second.

With the advent of multiple program portions, software development has become considerably more complicated. Whereas it was formerly considered sensible to develop all of a software system in the same programming language, now the different portions are often developed in entirely different languages. The relatively complex GUI, for example, can most conveniently be developed in one of the so-called visual languages, since those languages contain powerful facilities for creating it. The server software, on the other hand, will likely be built using a database package and the database language SQL (a Structured Query Language, for inquiring into the contents of a database). If the server software is also responsible for interacting with a network such as the Internet, it may also be coded in a network-support language such as Java. An object-oriented approach may be adopted in its development, since the software will need to manipulate objects on the Internet. See also Computer programming; Object-oriented programming; Software engineering.

---

software

The programs and instructions that run a computer, as opposed to the actual physical machinery and devices that compose the hardware.

computer program that controls the functions of a computer.

Computer instructions. A collection of instructions for a particular function is a program. A collection of programs to carry out a specific task is referred to as a package. The term software applies to applications programs, specialized system programs, or operating system utilities (which relates to operating the computer system). Software packages are available for many accounting-related applications, including bookkeeping, tax preparation and planning, management advisory services, audit, spreadsheets, data base management, preparing formal reports and documents, and practice administration (i.e., time and billing).

Computer systems consist in part of hardware that controls the overall activity of the computer. But in order for hardware to function, it must have the necessary instructions. These instructions are supplied by software. There are different kinds of software, each of which serves a specified purpose. Some software is necessary to make the computer operate. Another kind enables the computer to perform specific tasks. Still other software exists solely for entertainment purposes.

Operating System Software

The operating system software makes the computer perform its basic operational functions. Disk operating system (DOS) is one of the earlier types of operating system software used to power IBM-compatible computers. Commands are typed at a prompt to direct the computer to carry out its functions.

Windows is the most common operating system today. It permits several programs to be opened simultaneously and provides ease of movement between the open programs.

Windows NT is used for business networks. Once this operating system is downloaded and running, other kinds of software are opened to perform the desired functions.

The Macintosh Operating System (Mac OS) is designed for use with Apple, Mac, and Power Mac computers. One disadvantage of Mac OS is that fewer programs have been written for it compared to the number written for DOS or Windows.

Application Software

Application software allows performance of specific tasks, such as writing letters, computing formulas, playing games, or carrying out desktop publishing tasks

• Word-processing software: Writing tasks previously done on typewriters with considerable effort can now be easily completed with word-processing software. Writing tasks such as keying in reports, letters, and tables, as well as merging documents, can be performed easily. Documents can be easily edited and formatted. Revisions can be made by deleting (cutting), inserting, moving (cutting and pasting), and copying data. Documents can be stored (saved) and opened again for revisions and/or printing. Many styles and sizes of fonts are available to make the document attractive.
• Spreadsheet software: Spreadsheet software permits performance of an almost endless variety of quantitative tasks such as budgeting, keeping track of inventory, preparing financial reports, or manipulating numbers in any fashion, such as averaging each of ten departmental monthly sales over a six-month period. A spreadsheet contains cells, the intersection of rows and columns. Each cell contains a value keyed in by the user. Cells also contain formulas with many capabilities, such as adding, multiplying, dividing, subtracting, averaging, or even counting. An outstanding feature is a spreadsheet's ability to recalculate automatically. If one were preparing a budget, for example, and wanted to change a variable such as an increase in salary or a change in amount of car payments, the formulas would automatically recalculate the affected items and the totals.
• Database software: A database contains a list of information items that are similar in format and/or nature. An example is a phone book that lists a name, address, and phone number for each entry. Once stored in a database, information can be retrieved in several ways, using reports and queries. For example, all the names listed for a given area code could be printed out and used for a commercial mailing to that area.
• Desktop publishing software: This software permits the user to prepare documents by using both word-processing devices and graphics. Desktop publishing software uses word-processing software, with all its ease of entering and revising data, and supplements it with sophisticated visual features that stem from graphics software. For example, one can enhance a printed message with virtually any kind of illustration, such as drawings, paintings, and photographs.
• Presentation software: A speaker may use presentation software to organize a slide show for an audience. Text, graphics, sound, and movies can easily be included in the presentation. An added feature is that the slide show may be enhanced by inclusion of handouts with two to six slides printed on a page. The page may be organized to provide space for notes to be written in by the audience as the presentation ensues. An example of this is Power Point. Preparation of the software is simplified by the use of 'wizards' that walk the user through the creation of the presentation.
• Office suite software: Office suite software puts together complete programs of software. A typical suite package might include word processing, spreadsheet, databases, and presentation software. Depending on the jobs that need to be done, the suite provides the tools to make professional-looking documents.

Each piece of software works independently as well as with other parts of the suite. Items on the menu bar —such as File, Insert, and Format —work similarly on all the programs in a suite. Thus, familiarity with one program makes it easy to work with the other programs.

A typical example of office suite software is mail sent via bulk rate. It is usually addressed by name to an individual, rather than to "Occupant," with names and addresses accessed from the database memory. Merging those names with the letter in the word processor produces a form letter. A spreadsheet might also have been used to include charts and graphs with the letter. When completed, all forms are inserted into envelopes addressed by means of the database and word processor.

Communications Software

Using telephone lines and working through the computer's modem, communications software makes it possible to communicate to any location in the world using either fax or electronic mail. A fax transmits whatever copy is on an original sheet of paper (text, graphics, or handwriting) to another computer or fax machine. Electronic mail (e-mail) is a text message. It remains in the receiver's computer until retrieved. The message can be stored in either the sender's or the receiver's computer for later processing. Attachments or files can also be sent via e-mail.

Utility Software

Utility software is used to diagnose computer problems and repair them. A major type is a virus (or "illness") checker. It checks for viruses the computer may have received from downloading information received from the Internet, e-mail, or another disk. Although some viruses may do little damage, others can cause serious damage to files and/or the computer operating system. It is important for a computer owner to find a virus-check program, install it, use it, and keep it continually updated. New viruses are found continually, and the only way to be safe is to update. Some antivirus software allows easy updating by downloading new files from the Internet.

Educational Software

By teaching by means of games, educational soft ware is designed to make learning fun. The approach used in educational software is that of a tutorial in which the learner competes with him or herself. Such software appeals to persons of all ages but particularly to young children, who can learn skills related to reading and arithmetic. Older children and adults can learn or improve on a wide variety of more mature skills.

Special Software Acquisition Arrangements

Some kinds of software are given away. Another kind permits the potential user to try the software before purchasing it. Freeware software is free for those who ask, but the rights remain with the developer. Public domain software is free to the user without any copyright or other restrictions. Shareware software permits potential buyers to try out the software. A user who likes it may purchase it by sending payment to the developer. The developer in turn may send the buyer sup porting materials and information.

Summary

Software is as critical to computers as breathing is to humans. Fortunately, an extremely wide variety of software programs are available that make possible the preparation of virtually any kind of computer product.

Bibliography

"The Complete Suite: Office 97 Does It All," (1998). Smart Computing Reference Series: Office 97, (September): vol. 2(3).

"The Computer's Unsung Hero: Its Operating System," (1995). Smart Computing. (February): vol. 6(2).

"Keeping Your Computer Virus-Free", (1999). Smart Computer Reference Series: Troubleshooting, 2nd ed. (March): vol. 3(1).

"What You Should Know About Operating Systems", (1998). Smart Computer Reference Series: Computing for Beginners, (February): vol. 4(2).

"Where NT Falls in the Windows Family", (1998). Smart Computer Learning Series: Windows NT, (August): vol. 4(8).

[Article by: WANDA SAMSON]

Origin: 1959

The early computers were massive aggregations of hardware, a term first used for them in 1947. That was not a new word, just an application of the long-established word hardware, meaning "metal components and tools." But the hardware shell of the computer protected a soft heart.

At first this interior was made up of programs (1946) written in a code (1946) of 1s and 0s that instructed the computer in its own binary language. Then it included operating systems (1961) and countless more programs, ever more user-friendly (1979). All these were like thoughts in the human brain--dependent on the hardware yet not part of it. In contrast and analogy to hardware, therefore, everything you could not touch or see, the intangible instructions that made the computer work, took the name software in the late 1950s. The new term is attested in a 1960 article in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery: "Nearly every manufacturer is claiming compatibility with all other equipment via such software as COBOL."

In recent times, the creation of software has inspired numerous other computer words with the suffix -ware. Among them are freeware and shareware, meaning "software available free to all or for free trial on the honor system," vaporware, "software promised but not yet in existence," and wetware, "the human brain."

---

n

Various programming aids supplied by manufacturers to facilitate the user’s efficient operation of computer equipment. The collection of programs, routines, and documents associated with a computer (for example, compilers, library routines).

n. a set of computer programs, procedures, and associated documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system—for example, compilers, library routines, manuals, and circuit diagrams.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on software, visit Britannica.com.

Term used for the instructions or programs executed by a computer, as opposed to the physical hardware that enables the machine to follow them. The comparison of a psychological description of a person to a software description of a machine is exploited in functionalism.

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

Software instructs a computer what to do. (The computer's physical components are called hardware.) Computer software is the general term for a variety of procedures and routines that harness the computational power of a computer to produce, for example, a general operating system that coordinates the basic workings of the computer or specific applications that produce a database, a financial spreadsheet, a written document, or a game. Computer programmers use different types of programming languages to create the intricate sets of instructions that make computing possible.

Until the personal computer revolution began in the 1980s, software was written mainly for business, government, and the military, which employed large mainframe computers as hardware. With the introduction of personal computers, which have rapidly increased in power and performance, software has emerged as an important commercial product that can be marketed to individuals and small business as well as big business and the government.

Software is, under the law, intellectual property and therefore entitled to protection from persons who seek to exploit it illegally. Software can be protected through the use of trade secrets, copyright, patents, and trademarks.

Trade secret protection may apply to unpublished works and the basic software instructions called source code. Typically trade secrets will be effective if a company develops software and wishes to prevent others from finding out about it. A person who works on developing the software will be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which is a contract that obligates the person signing it to keep the project a secret.

Once software is developed and is ready to be sold, it can be copyrighted. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. For example, a person could not copyright the idea of a computer database management system but could copyright the structure and content of a database software program that expresses the idea of a database system.

Court decisions appear to have limited copyright protection for some features of software. In Apple Computer v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994), the court held that Apple Computer could not copyright the graphical user interface (GUI) it had developed for its Macintosh computer. Microsoft Corporation's Windows software program contained a GUI nearly identical to Apple's. The court stated that Microsoft and other software developers were free to copy the "functional" elements of Apple's GUI because there are only a limited number of ways that the basic GUI can be expressed differently.

In Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland International, 49 F.3d 807 (1st Cir. 1995), Lotus alleged that Borland had copied the hierarchical menu system of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, which contained 469 commands, in its Quattro spreadsheet program. The court of appeals ruled that Borland had not infringed on Lotus's copyright because the menu command hierarchy was a "method of operation," which is not copyrightable under federal copyright law (17 U.S.C.A. § 102(b)).

Patent law supplies another avenue of protection for software companies. A patent protects the idea itself. It is often an unattractive option, however, because it takes a significant amount of time, usually two years, and money to obtain a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent process is complicated and technical, with the applicant required to prove to the Patent and Trademark Office that a patent is deserved. Because the shelf life of a software program is often short, seeking a patent for the program is often impractical.

Trademark law protects the name of the software, not the software itself. Protecting a name from being used by others can be more valuable than other forms of protection.

When software is leased or sold, the purchaser usually must agree to accept a software license. When a business negotiates with a software company, it will sign a license agreement that details how the software is to be used and limits its distribution. A software license is an effective tool in preventing piracy.

When consumers buy software from a software company or through a third-party business, they find in the packaging a software license. The license is typically on the sealed envelope that contains the software media, which itself is sealed in plastic wrapping. These "shrink-wrap licenses" describe contractual conditions regarding the purchaser's use of the software. The opening of the shrink-wrap, according to the license, constitutes acceptance of all of the terms contained in the license agreement.

The purchaser is informed that the software is licensed and not sold to the purchaser. By retaining title to the software, the computer software company seeks to impose conditions upon the purchaser, or licensee, that are not otherwise permissible under federal copyright law. The principal terms of the shrink-wrap license include prohibiting the unauthorized copying and renting of the software, prohibiting reverse engineering (figuring out how the software works) and modifications of the software, limiting the use of the software to one computer, disclaiming warranties, and limiting liabilities.

The enforceability of shrink-wrap licenses has been challenged in the courts. The prevailing view is that when mass-market prepackaged software is sold, the transaction is a sale of goods and not a true license agreement. The key issue is whether the license document is part of an enforceable contract. Defenders of shrink-wrap licenses argue that the purchaser agrees to the conditions of the license after breaking the packaging seal and therefore contract law must uphold the written terms of the contract. Opponents argue that the sequence of events in the typical software purchase transaction is skewed. The purchaser is not aware of the license agreement until after the sale is consummated. The purchaser's acceptance of the license agreement is inferred when he or she opens the package or uses the software. However, the purchaser does not sign the license agreement. She may not even read the terms of the license agreement and, in any case, does not expressly agree to them.

In Step-Saver Data Systems v. Wyse Technology, 939 F.2d 91 (1991), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the shrink-wrap license did not become part of the contract and therefore was not a valid modification to a previously existing contractual relationship for the sale of prepackaged computer software. The court concluded that, under the Uniform Commercial Code § 2-207, a contract had existed prior to the opening of the package, the license contained new terms that materially altered the contract, and the purchaser did not expressly accept these terms. Because of these conclusions, the license agreement was invalid and unenforceable.

Software developers have legitimate concerns about software piracy. Counterfeiting is an international problem that results in the sale of millions of dollars of pirated software. The Software Publisher's Association (SPA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) are major organizations that combat software piracy. The SPA is the leading international trade association for the personal computer software industry. Both SPA and BSA have collected millions of dollars worldwide from companies that have used pirated software. Most companies using pirated software are reported by former employees.

See: Computer-Assisted Legal Research; Computer Crime; E-mail; Internet; Sales Law.

IN BRIEF: The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware of a computer and direct its operation.

I have some great software for playing games on my computer.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Common misspelling(s) of software

• sofware

Dansk (Danish)
n. - software, programmel, dataprogrammel

Nederlands (Dutch)
software, programmatuur

Français (French)
n. - logiciel

Deutsch (German)
n. - Software

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (Η/Υ) λογισμικό, προγράμματα

Italiano (Italian)
software

Português (Portuguese)
n. - software (m)

Русский (Russian)
программное или математическое обеспечение, программные средства

Español (Spanish)
n. - software, programática

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mjukvara, programvara

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
软件, 程序材料

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 軟體, 程式材料

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (컴퓨터) 소프트웨어, 상품 따위의 부가가치를 높이기 위한 수단, (우주선 등의) 도면

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ソフトウェア

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) برامج للعقل ألألكتروني‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮תוכנה‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.

Software	Peachtree Software
software	Software Utilities