Identification-method research for open-source software ecosystems

In recent years, open-source software (OSS) development has grown, with many developers around the world working on different OSS projects. A variety of open-source software ecosystems have emerged, for instance, GitHub, StackOverflow, and SourceForge. One of the most typical social-programming and code-hosting sites, GitHub, has amassed numerous open-source-software projects and developers in the same virtual collaboration platform. Since GitHub itself is a large open-source community, it hosts a collection of software projects that are developed together and coevolve. The great challenge here is how to identify the relationship between these projects, i.e., project relevance. Software-ecosystem identification is the basis of other studies in the ecosystem. Therefore, how to extract useful information in GitHub and identify software ecosystems is particularly important, and it is also a research area in symmetry. In this paper, a Topic-based Project Knowledge Metrics Framework (TPKMF) is proposed. By collecting the multisource dataset of an open-source ecosystem, project-relevance analysis of the open-source software is carried out on the basis of software-ecosystem identification. Then, we used our Spectral Clustering algorithm based on Core Project (CP-SC) to identify software-ecosystem projects and further identify software ecosystems. We verified that most software ecosystems usually contain a core software project, and most other projects are associated with it. Furthermore, we analyzed the characteristics of the ecosystem, and we also found that interactive information has greater impact on project relevance. Finally, we summarize the Topic-based Project Knowledge Metrics Framework

Making Sense Of Software Ecosystems: A Critical Review

Visualizing software as ecosystems has been an emergent phenomenon. The objective of this paper is to analyze the field of software ecosystems (SECO) and provide a critical review of the existing literature. This research identifies domains and peripheries of a SECO; highlights architectural challenges; examines design and control mechanisms and discusses some of the learning’s from other popular paradigms that can be applied to address the key challenges in the SECO paradigm. This paper also aims to recommend future research directions for software ecosystems and its role in the broader context of information systems research

Analyzing the Evolution of Inter-package Dependencies in Operating Systems: A Case Study of Ubuntu

An Operating System (OS) combines multiple interdependent software packages, which usually have their own independently developed architectures. When a multitude of independent packages are placed together in an OS, an implicit inter-package architecture is formed. For an evolutionary effort, designers/developers of OS can greatly benefit from fully understanding the system-wide dependency focused on individual files, specifically executable files, and dynamically loadable libraries. We propose a framework, DepEx, aimed at discovering the detailed package relations at the level of individual binary files and their associated evolutionary changes. We demonstrate the utility of DepEx by systematically investigating the evolution of a large-scale Open Source OS, Ubuntu. DepEx enabled us to systematically acquire and analyze the dependencies in different versions of Ubuntu released between 2005 (5.04) to 2023 (23.04). Our analysis revealed various evolutionary trends in package management and their implications based on the analysis of the 84 consecutive versions available for download (these include beta versions). This study has enabled us to assert that DepEx can provide researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of the implicit software dependencies in order to improve the stability, performance, and functionality of their software as well as to reduce the risk of issues arising during maintenance, updating, or migration.Comment: This paper is accepted for publication in the 17th international conference on Software Architectur

Circular, Green, and Bio Economy : How Do Companies in Land-Use Intensive Sectors Align with Sustainability Concepts?

The UN Agenda 2030 deems the private sector pivotal in co-governing sustainability issues. Despite intense research on corporate sustainability there is no explicit analysis of which policy-driven concepts companies choose to forward their sustainability visions and practices. This is relevant because communication of corporate sustainability contributes to legitimizing or delegitimizing company actions, while simultaneously feeding back into public thinking and actions towards sustainability transformations. We addressed the research gap by considering three sustainability concepts mainstreamed at the global level: Circular economy (CE), Green economy (GE), and Bioeconomy (BE). Content analysis was performed on 123 reports from DJSI World companies in five land-use intensive sectors (forest, food, beverages, mining, and energy). Results suggest CE to be omnipresent and homogeneous across all companies and sectors. GE was the second most frequent concept, especially in forest and mining. BE was under-represented in all reports, with the exception of the forest sector. Interlinkages between concepts were few. The CE-BE connection appeared to be the strongest, concerning efficiency and recycling of bio-based resources. The analysis of global sustainability concepts from the perspective of corporate disclosure enables a timely discussion on the role and limits of the business organizations as a participant to sustainability transformations globally.Peer reviewe

Design-time Models for Resiliency

Resiliency in process-aware information systems is based on the availability of recovery flows and alternative data for coping with missing data. In this paper, we discuss an approach to process and information modeling to support the specification of recovery flows and alternative data. In particular, we focus on processes using sensor data from different sources. The proposed model can be adopted to specify resiliency levels of information systems, based on event-based and temporal constraints

Applying a Layered Framework to Disaster Recovery

Building highly available information technology (IT) infrastructures has become critical to many corporations’ survival. However, the disaster recovery (DR) industry lacks a common enterprise framework to capitalize on the value that DR provides corporations due in part to inadequate conceptual frameworks for DR that can facilitate the alignment of corporate efforts toward corporate resiliency. To address this problem, we propose a new conceptualization for the DR of enterprise architecture. This conceptual framework comprises DR layers that describe the nature of DR and its related components from a functional and technical point of view. We discuss the benefits of these DR layers to DR teams and compare our approach to traditional thinking. Further, we present a case study, its findings, and their implications for DR. As a result, we demonstrate how our layered framework of enterprise architecture provides a unified understanding of the DR practice, which one can then use to support decision making and corporate alignment of the DR practice and its associated technology