Clopenness of Systems: The Interwoven Nature of Ecosystems

Openness of a software product or software producing and end-user organization is perceived as a binary concept: organizations are perceived to be closed, with its negative connotations, such as being dictatorial, undemocratic, and opaque, whereas an open organization is positively considered to be transparent and favorable to deal with. The binary view of openness, however, is harmful for the software industry, since wrong decisions are made on these qualifications, calling for a better definition of the concepts of openness and closeness. In this paper a definition is given of the concepts, which led to the concept clopenness; a model is provided that assesses the clopenness of a software producing or end-user organization and its software products, and a case study is performed to show the use of the model and concepts. The results of the paper are that the use of the clopenness model provides insight into the openness of an organization, in turn enabling better founded business decisions.

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