It's a pretty standard grammatical term, though local names for the concept may of course vary.
Anyway, I'm afraid dictionaries (treating them as a quick way to check typical usage) don't back you up. Here are a few citations: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/software "mass noun", and then gives various examples consistent with that https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/software "uncountable noun", and then gives various examples consistent with that https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/software#English "Software is a mass noun (some software, a piece of software). By non-native speakers it is sometimes erroneously treated as a countable noun (a software, some softwares)." http://blog.dictionary.com/is-software-a-mass-noun/ If you want the sense you're going for, then you need to say "software packages" or similar. Regarding food comparisons: "fish" is not a mass noun, but rather a count noun with an irregular plural, which is quite a different, er, kettle of fish. When you say "two fish", you're counting them even if the plural happens to use a zero ending. If you want a food comparison, then try "bread" instead: while you can say "that is some nice bread", you can't say *"those are some nice bread" even if you're talking about more than one loaf, and you would have to say something like "those are some nice loaves of bread" instead. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1670268 Title: Grammar mistake under 3rd-party software option To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1670268/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
