Software ecosystems: Taking software development beyond the boundaries of the organization

Övrig text i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2012

The Special Issue 2012 of The Journal of Systems and Software offers articles regarding the development in the software ecosystems. Geir Hanssen presents a longitudinal case study of an emerging ecosystem. The paper raises interesting aspects of a theory of software ecosystems, including the role of a central referent organization, self-regulation, networked character as well as the importance of sharing values, control and the business and technology aspects of successful ecosystem adoption. The second paper, by Terhi Kilamo and co-authors, takes a different perspective and studies the challenge of putting software developed as closed source into the open-source domain with the intent of building a software ecosystem around it. The fourth paper, by Slinger Jansen and co-authors, raises a very important challenge to many organizations and external developers looking to determine whether to invest in a software ecosystem. The fifth paper, by Rick Kazman and co-authors, focuses on software architecture analysis and how analysis techniques can be applied to software ecosystems.