A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective of Software Reuse in the Digital Age: : An Agenda for IS Research

Most software on which we rely to help us organize our professional and personal lives is based on the reuse of other pieces of software that are created and maintained by groups of software developers that work independently from one another. Oftentimes, these groups simply publish their software in the form of self-contained packages available on dedicated repositories, facilitating the widespread diffusion of their work. Whereas the production and publication of software packages fosters unprecedented levels of digital innovation, there are also drawbacks associated with software reuse (e.g., as was publicly discussed in 2021 with the discovery of the Log4Shell vulnerability). Building on previous research, our work explores the implications associated with the unprecedented scale and uncoordinated nature of packaged software reuse. We use complex adaptive systems as a generative lens to help us conceptualize the phenomenon and identify promising avenues for research and practice on this topic. Our work, therefore, draws attention to the importance of the packaged software reuse phenomenon as well as the need for research to help increase our understanding of its nature and implications considering its prevalence in software development practice and the overall importance of software in our everyday lives.

Software is instrumental to the accelerated pace of digital innovation, and our ability to rapidly develop and deliver digital products and services is largely based on the reuse of existing software. In recent years, packaged software reuse has emerged as an important phenomenon driving the creation of new software, both proprietary and open source, as well as the emergence and evolution of entire software ecosystems. Arguing that our theoretical understanding of the nature and the magnitude of current packaged software reuse practice remains limited, our objective with this research commentary is twofold. First, we draw attention to the importance of packaged software reuse and its relevance as a promising phenomenon of interest for information systems (IS) researchers. Second, we mobilize the concept of generativity to conceptualize packaged software as a form of technological innovation that fosters large-scale (re)combination and propose complex adaptive systems (CAS) as a theoretical foundation to help us engage with the current nature of the phenomenon. Using key principles of CAS as the generative foundation for our conceptual scaffolding, we offer a research framework for packaged software reuse and develop an agenda for IS research organized across three main axes. For each axis, we outline relevant research themes and research questions leveraging the nature of software as objects constituted of other pieces of software developed and maintained by heterogeneous groups of software developers. Shedding light on the renewed role of software reuse, our work contributes to ongoing conversations on generativity and software ecosystems as well as the design of digital products and services.

History: Suprateek Sarker, Senior Editor; Ning Su, Associate Editor.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.1200.