Slinger Jansen, Anthony Finkelstein, Sjaak Brinkkemper. A sense of community: A research agenda for software ecosystems. In 31st International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2009, May 16-24, 2009, Vancouver, Canada, Companion Volume. pages 187-190, IEEE, 2009. [doi]
Software vendors and software service providers can no longer function without taking their software ecosystem into account. Software vendors presently face three challenges in regards to software ecosystems: (1) they require insight into software ecosystems, (2) they require insight into the possible survival strategies that exist for software ecosystem participants, and (3) they require an overview of possible ways in which the organization can open up to the software ecosystem without losing intellectual property. This paper addresses these needs and provides an overview of the defining characteristics of software ecosystems. To illustrate these defining characteristics two case studies are provided.