Reviewing the Health of Software Ecosystems - A Conceptual Framework Proposal

The health of a software ecosystem is an indication of how well the ecosystem is functioning. The measurement of health can point to issues that need to be addressed in the ecosystem and areas for the ecosystem to improve. However, the software ecosystem field lacks an applicable way to measure and evaluate health. In this work, we review the literature related to the concept of software ecosystem health and the literature that inspired the software ecosystem health literature (a total of 23 papers) and (i) identify that the main source of inspiration is the health of business ecosystems while also influenced by theories from natural ecosystems and open source, (ii) identify two areas where software ecosystems differ from business and natural ecosystems, and (iii) propose a conceptual framework for defining and measuring the health of software ecosystems.