Toward software engineering ecosystems definition

Abstract

Nowadays, the fundamental science of software engineering is being formed. It should represent knowledge that meets the requirements of the concept of sustainable development. This fundamental science could be named as the Software Engineering Ecology. Along with others, it should include a section containing knowledge about software engineering ecosystems. This section of the future science has been intensively developing for more than fifteen years. However, today, there is no consen- sus among researchers regarding the definitions of the software ecosystem. Naturally, it does not contribute to the creation of an appropriate section of emerging science. All authors offer only a software ecosystem, considering it in different contexts and defining it in different ways. The term “software ecosystem” is now used to refer to a wide range of ecosystems that are actually software engineering ecosystems. The purpose of this paper is to propose a basis for defining software engineering ecosystems. By analogy with the concepts of the landscape and the trophic chain of biological ecosystems, the concepts of software landscape and software engineering value chain are proposed. Based on these concepts, the diversity of software engineering ecosystems is shown. A model of the software engineering ecosystems and a classification of the software engineering ecosystems are proposed.