Organic software, Software Co-operative ?

Question

For me software has been one of the most interesting, frustrating, diverse and amazing experiences I have had, so it wouldn't surprise me much if it were to surprise me again.

Is there be such a thing as organic software ?

Something organic would seem to be far from the notion of software, being that it lives as we write it in an environment of something purely non organic, and breathes and gives life to manufactured things.

There is 'Fair trade coffee' - things that are fairer for those who are producers 'Organic Vegetables', and "No preservatives, colourings, or artificial flavourings' - things that are better for the consumers.

Could a multi-national company produce organic software ?

Is there any such thing as a 'Software Co-operative', where developers collectively obtain benefits for providing investment - apart from of course, the investment itself.

Answer 1

The Matrix

Answer 2

About organic software, I've heard of genetic algorithms.

For a notion of Fair Trade Software, may be a close concept would be Offshore...

Answer 3

How about Open Source projects, where the investment is time and effort, and the benefits are increased skills, kudos and possibly better employment prospects?

Answer 4

I don't know if i understood the question: do you mean something like human brains or something more modest? :) If you make organic software, you need organic hardware too.

I would say, making a simple earth-worm brains substitute with todays technology/knowledge is far from possible...

Answer 5

There is in fact such thing called "organic software" or "organic systems". Even though it is seen to be something good in current society in software development it isn't ;-)

In software development "organic software" is software the kind of grew through change requests and almost impossible to maintain. In most cases the software evolved from some e.g. MS Access Macro/Forms and the macro's code was transformed to VB6 (since you can copy almost all code from it) because of more drastic changes requested. Nearly always it is the case that the software was changed by different programmers that once were employed in a company and none documented even a bit (despite such code comments like: "Do not modify or delete this method, otherwise the whole system will crash.") And I can tell you from my own experience: It's no fun to be given such a project for maintainance or even implementing changes.

The other thing comparable to "organic systems" (as you described it) are neuronal networks/software that is able to modify/evolve itself in a limited way.