Revisiting the concept of components in software engineering from a software ecosystem perspective

The treatment of economic and social issues in Software Engineering (SE) was pointed out as a challenge for the next years, since SE needs to treat issues beyond the technical side, which requires observing it in another perspective. In this sense, this paper revisits the concept of components in SE through a sociotechnical construction. Based on a ranking of its critical elements, a study shows that components are assets in a set of collaborative/local environments more than in global/corporate markets. So, an approach called Brechó-VCM was proposed to treat some of these elements, providing an environment to discuss the future of Software Reuse on a software ecosystem perspective. These analyses, as well as their results, reinforce that SE community needs to learn with the components case and effectively looks at SE future in a sociotechnical way.

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