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

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