Open Platforms: New Challenges for Software Engineering

International audienceRecently, platforms running third-party applications have become very popular, in particular due to the explosion of the smartphone market. These open platforms propose a rich stream of applications, targeting general-purpose as well as customized user needs. Developing applications for such target platforms introduces new requirements and raises new challenges. This paper identifies key requirements for designing open platforms. After an overview of the existing approaches, we identify the challenges for the next generation of open platforms