What is Software? HiTech Supreme Court clarifies
IN a recent Judgement, the Supreme Court observed,
“The term software is defined by the Advanced Law Lexicon (3rd Ed.) as "distinct from hardware, the computer program enabling a computer to function". The same expression software is also defined in Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia as "the entire set of programs, procedures and routines associated with the operation of a computer system, including the operating system". We have also considered the meaning of the word "software" given by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the entire set of programs, procedures and related documentation associated with a system and especially a computer system; specifically computer programs.
The aforesaid definitions, therefore, make it crystal clear that software is the set of instructions that allows physical hardware to function and perform computations in a particular manner, be it a word processor, web browser or the computer's operating system. These expressions are in contrast with the concept of hardware which are the physical components of a computer system, and data, which is information that performs no computation and gives no enabling instructions to computer hardware but is ready for processing by the computer software."
We will bring you the judgement tomorrow.