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Portability is the degree of effectiveness and efficiency with which a system, product or component can be transferred from one hardware, software or other operational or usage environment to another. This characteristic is composed of the following sub-characteristics:¹⁾

• Adaptability - Degree to which a product or system can effectively and efficiently be adapted for different or evolving hardware, software or other operational or usage environments.
• Installability - Degree of effectiveness and efficiency with which a product or system can be successfully installed and/or uninstalled in a specified environment.
• Replaceability - Degree to which a product can replace another specified software product for the same purpose in the same environment.

The phrase “to port” means to modify software and make it adaptable to work on a different computer system. For example, to port an application to Linux means to modify the program so that it can be run in a Linux environment.

Portability also refers to the ability of an application to move across environments, not just across platforms. To clarify, a computer platform generally refers only to the operating system and computer hardware. A computer environment is much broader and may include the hardware, the operating system and the interfaces with other software, users and programmers.