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danielskatz / software-vs-data

understanding and documenting the differences between software and data in the context of citation
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Software is active, data is passive #15

Closed tompollard closed 7 years ago

tompollard commented 8 years ago

This may just be another way of saying "Data provides evidence, software provides a tool", but I think a functional way of distinguishing between software and data is to say that software is active, while data is passive.

By this I mean that software generally performs a function upon something (e.g. software processes data), while data generally has a function performed upon it (e.g. data is processed by software).

danielskatz commented 8 years ago

Feel free to add this as a pull request.

band commented 8 years ago

The difference is not about activity. It is, as @tompollard notes, that "data is processed by software". This is a key property and is separate from the others. I suggest changing "Software is active, data is passive." to either "Data is processed by software." or maybe "Software is run on hardware, data is processed by software."

tompollard commented 8 years ago

By active and passive, I'm just trying to draw the distinction between "acting upon something" (active, software) and "being acted upon" (passive, data)".

There may be a clearer way of phrasing this, but I think that "data is processed by software" isn't quite right because it misses cases like "Data is generated by software".

danielskatz commented 8 years ago

we already have "software is executable, unlike papers or data" as the first difference. Maybe we can change that to "software is executable, data is not" and drop this one?

danielskatz commented 7 years ago

resolved by https://github.com/danielskatz/software-vs-data/commit/3589769f115f7d16d4dc57230a5bc7bfaf22d1a8