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Software as an Object of Shared Maintenance Knowledge

Tue, August 18, 6:00 to 7:40pm CEST (6:00 to 7:40pm CEST), virPrague, VR 03

Abstract

As on one hand an unready artefact to construct and develop, and on the other hand an existing, deeply entangled material fact in an unready, or *broken world* (Jackson, 2016), what does it take to maintain computer software?

Software maintenance typically involves intervening in source code, the concrete material of software. Similarly to developing new functionality in response to new requirements, and repairing by fixing bugs, maintenance and re-alignment demand more effort in (re)constructing knowledge what actually even exists and how it fits together than writing any new code. A key element of this continuous *codework* (Cohn 2019; Mackenzie 2006) is the production, reproduction and *pre-production* of the conditions of maintenance in yet unknown futures.

How is such sufficient, necessary and always situated knowledge achieved, governed and distributed? Based on participant observation and listening in at software maintainer meetups, complemented with artefact studies and discourse analysis online, we describe how communities maintainers recruit, select and onboard new contributors, negotiate, stabilize and problematize the terms of maintenance labour, and delegate work onto socio-technical (and recursively often software-supported) knowledge infrastructure to effectively maintain a given software over the relatively *longue durée* typically ignored in analysis of software and of codework.

We believe our work on the knowledge practices and objects involved in the precarious, negotiated, delegated, unpredictable, policed, underprioritized, sometimes valorized and often unsolicited maintenance labour contributes to maintenance studies (Denis and Pontille 2019; Denis, Mongili and Pontille 2015) more generally.

# References

Cohn, M. (2019). Keeping Software Present: Software as a Timely Object for Digital STS. In J. Vertesi & D. Ribes (Eds.), DigitalSTS: A Field Guide for Science & Technology Studies (pp. 423–446). Princeton University Press. https://pure.itu.dk/portal/en/publications/keeping-software-present-software-as-a-timely-object-for-digital-sts(26734431-5cf8-4d93-9cac-7b211cf1d101).html

Denis, J., Mongili, A., & Pontille, D. (2016). Maintenance & Repair in Science and Technology Studies. TECNOSCIENZA: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 6(2), 5-16–16.

Denis, J., & Pontille, D. (2019). Why do maintenance and repair matter? In Janet Vertesi & D. Ribes (Eds.), DigitalSTS: A Field Guide for Science & Technology Studies. Princeton University Press. https://hal-mines-paristech.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02172939

Jackson, S. J. (2014). Rethinking Repair. In T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski, & K. A. Foot (Eds.), Media Technologies (pp. 221–240). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0011

Mackenzie, A. (2006). Cutting Code. Software and Sociality. Peter Lang. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/58468

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