The Life and Death of Software Ecosystems

Software ecosystems have gained a lot of attention in recent times. Industry and developers gather around technologies and collaborate to their advancement; when the boundaries of such an effort go beyond certain amount of projects, we are witnessing the appearance of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) ecosystems. In this chapter, we explore two aspects that contribute to a healthy ecosystem, related to the attraction (and detraction) and the death of ecosystems. To function and survive, ecosystems need to attract people, get them on-boarded and retain them. In Section One we explore possibilities with provocative research questions for attracting and detracting contributors (and users): the lifeblood of FLOSS ecosystems. Then in the Section Two, we focus on the death of systems, exploring some presumed to be dead systems and their state in the afterlife.