Evolution and prospects of the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) package ecosystem

Free and open source software package ecosystems have existed for a long time, but such collaborative development practice has surged in recent years. One of the oldest and most popular package ecosystems is Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), the repository of packages of the statistical language R, a popular statistical computing environment. CRAN stores a large number of packages that are updated regularly and depend on many other packages in a complex graph of relations. As the repository grows, its sustainability could be threatened by that complexity or nonuniform evolution of some packages. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the evolution of the CRAN repository in the last 20 years, considering the laws of software evolution and the effect of CRAN's policies on such development. Results show how the progress of CRAN is consistent with the laws of continuous growth and change and how there seems to be a relevant increase in complexity in recent years. Significant challenges are raising related to the scale and scope of software package managers and the services they provide; understanding how they change over time and what might endanger their sustainability are key factors for their future improvement, maintenance, policies, and, eventually, sustainability of the ecosystem

Knowledge-related processes critical to the enabling of systematic software asset reuse in a global IT company

This research presents a case study on the knowledge management processes critical for achieving systematic software asset reuse in a global IT company. Reusing a software asset and its related artefacts at selected other business clients drives innovation, increases efficiency and can generate several million dollars in revenue from just one reuse. To date, known software asset reuse success is limited. Despite practical relevance, research has stagnated by mainly investigating technical reuse aspects. This thesis addresses three gaps in the literature by looking from a business perspective at the intellectual capital required for software asset reuse, presenting five real-life software asset reuses and detailing the knowledge management processes towards systematic software asset reuse. The answers to the research questions advance the academic literature in the fields of intellectual capital, circular economy and knowledge. Theoretical implications are: The intellectual capital required for systematic software asset reuse is a particular software asset, the reusable software asset, further defined here. The circular economy is enriched by adding a two-step distribution task to the reuse process. The thesis refines knowledge management concerning intangible reuse. A new finding is that software asset reuse requires a proactive decision to anticipate a scarcity of knowledge in space or time, which has been identified as the software asset reuse trigger. Reuse sets in before the life end of the software asset is reached. It creates parallel software instances via abstraction, repurposing and adaptation. These boost the asset lifetime as they are logically linked. They represent tailored solutions for a heterogeneous client base and, therefore, target business-to-business niche markets. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by identifying that collaborative sharing of the change required for one client with existing reusers leads to improved software quality, surpassing that of other software constructs. Further, it claims that reusable software assets target a parallel market to software products. This research significantly contributes to practice: First, by demonstrating that reuse is only feasible if the software asset can be adapted. Second, one reason for being of some reusable software assets is to stop the flood of less funded individual software trying to serve the same need. Third, a managerial guide provides advice on building reuse capabilities in the IT organisation to support the change that drives software asset reuse