[Themaintainers] Talk: Mace Ojala & Marisa Cohn "Software Maintenance as Materialization of Common Knowledge" (Maintenance & Philosophy of Technology SIG Thursday December 11th 18-1915 UTC+1)

[Luis Villa]

Hi mark (and the whole group in case of interest to others): I
unfortunately can’t make this time but have the authors published anything
on this yet, and/or are they willing to circulate drafts privately for
comment to experienced software maintainers with a high tolerance for
academic perspectives? (Asking for a friend who is me, but probably also
others)

Luis

On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 6:35 AM mark young <youngm54001 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> We’re pleased to announce the last session of the SPT maintenance and
> philosophy of technology special interest group for 2025 on December 11th
> 18-1915 UTC+1. For this session, we’re excited to welcome Mace Ojala (Ruhr
> University Bochum) and Marisa Cohn (IT University Copenhagen) who’ll be
> sharing their research on software maintenance. Their talk provides a
> much-needed contribution to our understanding of the epistemology of
> maintenance practices, by exploring the role of shared knowledge in the
> practices by which code is maintained over time. If you'd like a link for
> the talk, please send me a quick email at mark at markthomasyoung.net
>
> Best,
> Mark
>
> *Software Maintenance as Materialization of Common Knowledge*
>
> Mace Ojala (Ruhr University Bochum) & Marisa Cohn (IT University
> Copenhagen)
>
> Thursday December 11th 18-1915 UTC+1
>
> *Abstract:* While development of software always implicitly takes place
> in contexts of inherited entanglements and legacies, its maintenance deals
> explicitly with what is already present. Software maintenance locates
> itself in media res, in the middle of things. Maintaining software
> typically involves intervening in the material archive of source code,
> documentation, and software tools. Doing so successfully requires relevant
> situated knowledge of how the software at hand already hangs together, and
> how to effectively put this knowledge to use. This knowledge builds on
> first-hand experience, acquired in practice over shared lifetimes of people
> and code. For code to continue to endure over time, ongoing articulation of
> its entanglements is externalized and materialized across contributing
> programmers and software development tools, each themselves vulnerable and
> in need of maintenance. This paper analyzes how this process of
> externalizing and materializing knowledge is negotiated. We conclude that
> the common knowledge which suspends the string figure of software in time
> and in a broken world (Jackson 2014) is always a locally hybrid assemblage
> which carries this knowledge forward. Hence, to maintain software well is
> to add on to its legacy.
>
> (In order to avoid confusion regarding the timing of the talks - the
> following table clarifies when the talks begin in different locations)
>
> New York:         12:00
>
> San Francisco: 09:00
>
> London:            17:00
>
> Amsterdam:     18:00
>
> Mark Thomas Young
> Postdoctoral Fellow
> University of Oslo
> https://uio.academia.edu/MarkThomasYoung
>
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