A Longitudinal Study of the e-Market for Software Components

Component Based Software Development (CBD) holds high promises, but develops its full potential only when software components are traded in a component market. The Internet seems ideal for this purpose and various sources have predicted a bright future for the Internet Software Component Market (SCM). However, very little is known about the current status, structure and trends within the SCM. This study develops a model of the SCM and a classification of components traded in the SCM. Using these, a number of propositions are developed and tested using a longitudinal dataset. The results show that the SCM is still in its early stage although there are some trends towards a mature market. The research method deployed in this study provides insights into how the SCM develops and can also be deployed to study other e-markets