Software ecosystem sustainability assessment: an investigation of the state of the art and stakeholder perceptions

Abstract

Sustainability is a key driver for innovation and is reshaping many industry sectors. The software ecosystem (SECO) industry is likely to follow soon with the new initiatives that are starting to appear for sustainability. This means that the success of a SECO will not solely be measured from the point of view of profit anymore, but also from their social responsibility and environmental impact. Traditionally, SECOs have mostly been concerned with the economic dimension of sustainability, as a result of the body of knowledge to analyze sustainability in software ecosystems is small. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the adoption of a more holistic conception of sustainability in SECOs could affect the industrial and academic impact on the SECO community. We conducted interviews to investigate sustainability as a holistic concept and created a list of material sustainability topics. Afterwards, we conducted a survey with these identified sustainability topics in order to do materiality assessment, so we could see which topic is more material for sustainability in software ecosystems. The results indicate that sustainability practices in SECOs are not yet common. Sustainability is a new concept for SECOs and the academic community and practitioners did not yet have the concept of sustainability well defined or even analyzed in their SECOs, even though they did indicate that analyzing their sustainability can bring competitive advantages for several SECOs. With our research, we identified 16 sustainability topics. These 16 sustainability topics were prioritized using materiality assessment so that the most material sustainability topics can be used as a starting point to improve the sustainability for SECOs in the future.