An Introduction to Software Ecosystems

TL;DR

This chapter provides an overview of software ecosystems, focusing on their development, social and technical dependencies, and the analytical methods used to study these socio-technical networks.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive classification, terminology, and methodological overview of software ecosystems, highlighting their social and technical interdependencies.

Findings

Classification of different types of software ecosystems

Introduction of socio-technical dependency networks

Overview of analysis techniques and research methods

Abstract

This chapter defines and presents different kinds of software ecosystems. The focus is on the development, tooling and analytics aspects of software ecosystems, i.e., communities of software developers and the interconnected software components (e.g., projects, libraries, packages, repositories, plug-ins, apps) they are developing and maintaining. The technical and social dependencies between these developers and software components form a socio-technical dependency network, and the dynamics of this network change over time. We classify and provide several examples of such ecosystems. The chapter also introduces and clarifies the relevant terms needed to understand and analyse these ecosystems, as well as the techniques and research methods that can be used to analyse different aspects of these ecosystems.