Definitions Edit

General Edit

Maintenance is

Any act that either prevents the failure or malfunction of equipment or restores its operating capability.[1]
[a]ction necessary to retain or restore an item to a specified condition.[2]

Hardware Edit

Maintenance is "the servicing of the machine in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that machine. . . ."[3]

[T]he term 'maintenance' has a much broader temporal connotation [than 'repair']. The Senate Report on section 117 characterized 'maintenance' as including 'checking the proper functioning of [ ] components.' . . . Thus, maintenance, or 'servicing,' was meant to encompass monitoring systems for problems, not simply fixing a single, isolated malfunction."[4]

Information Edit

See Maintenance of information

Software Edit

Software maintenance (also program maintenance) is

[t]he modification of a software product, after delivery, to correct faults, to improve performance or other attributes, or to adapt the product to a changed environment.[5]
[t]he process of altering program code or instructions to meet new or changing requirements.[6]

References Edit

  1. NIST Special Publication 800-82, at B-5.
  3. 17 U.S.C. §117(d)(1).
  4. Storage Technology Corp. v. Custom Hardware Engineering & Consulting, Inc., 421 F.3d 1307, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (full-text).
  5. California Office of Systems Integration, Definitions (full-text).
  6. Auditing and Financial Management: Glossary of EDP Terminology, at 13.

See also Edit
