Healthy until otherwise proven: Some proposals for renewing research of software ecosystem health
: Hyrynsalmi S., Ruohonen J., Seppänen M.
: Bram Adams et al.
: International Workshop on Software Health
Publisher: IEEE Computer Society
: 2018
: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Software Health
: Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
: 18
: 24
: 7
: 978-1-4503-5730-2
: 2333-7400
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3194124.3194128
The software ecosystem has become a central conceptualisation for characterising the contemporary software business world. To understand and evaluate ecosystems, the concept of 'ecosystem health' was borrowed from the field of biology. In a 'healthy' ecosystem, the participants will flourish and, vice versa, suffer in an unhealthy one. Yet, there is a lack of empirical validations for the current approach as well as certain limitations regarding the concept. This paper will present a critique on current ecosystem health measurement and evaluation approaches. In addition, there is discussion on three proposals that could help to refocus the academic research on software ecosystem health.