What is a software 'patch'?

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Last updated on: 4/23/2008 12:23:00 PM PST

General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
The National Academy of Sciences' 2005 report "Asking the Right Questions About Electronic Voting," stated: "A vendor may uncover a potentially problematic issue in software that has been previously certified and address the issue in a program patch... [A patch] is any change to a software program." 2005 - National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
U.S. Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) explained in the May 23, 2003 Congressional Record: "A 'patch' [is] a modification to the voting machines' software program." May 23, 2003 - Rush Holt, PhD
Ellen Theisen, CEO of the Vote-PAD Company, stated in her May 12, 2004 paper "Voter-Verified Paper Ballots Are Not Enough to Fix DRE Problems," available at the VotersUnite! website: "'Patch' is an innocuous word, like 'glitch.' But a patch means that the code has been changed to fix a bug." May 12, 2004 - Ellen Theisen, MA
Oracle Corporation, an information technology company, included the following definition in their online glossary (accessed June 29, 2006): "Patch - A software update designed to repair known problems or 'bugs' in previous software releases." June 29, 2006 - Oracle Corporation