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Proceedings of COOP 2010 pp 287–308Cite as

Appropriation of the Eclipse Ecosystem: Local Integration of Global Network Production

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Abstract

Eclipse and Mozilla Firefox represent a new type of open software that can be supplemented by manifold extensions, being implemented by independent software vendors and open source projects. Research on such software ecosystems shows that collaboration patterns in the software industry evolve from value chains to value nets. An often ignored side-effect of this development is a vast extent of integration work that needs to be done by users. Taking a user point of view, this paper presents an empirical study on the practices of appropriating the Eclipse ecosystem as an example of radical tailorability, based on new opportunities given by the surrounding ecosystem. We show the practices users have developed to manage the antagonism of maintaining a stable and productive working environment, while simultaneously innovating it. Based on these results, we outline different opportunities to improve flexible software by supporting cooperation among the diverse actors involved, in a network of production and consumption.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Eclipse users are typically software developers. Despite the fact that this group does not present ‘the’ typical end user, we decided after discussing the pros and cons, to investigate the appropriation practices of Eclipse. The main reason is similar to a ‘lead user’-approach as we can observe emerging strategies to make use of a widespread, dynamical and complex software ecosystem. It has millions of users, it realized a highly advanced technological concept of ‘everything is a plug-in’ [12] and its complex ecosystem offers one of the most advanced platforms to enable a network economy in the software industry.

  2. 2.

    A feature in Eclipse defines a set of plug-ins and sub features which must be installed when the feature is installed.

  3. 3.

    We calculated the distance of two configurations with the set of features Ci and Cj as follows: ufeature(Ci,Cj) = (|Ci\Cj| + | Cj\Ci|)/(|Ci| + |Cj|). Based on this calculated the average distance: ūfeature(C1,…, Cn) = 1/n*(n-1)*S 0£ i < j £ n Ufeature (Ci,Cj). A value of ū near 0 means that the different Eclipse installations are almost identical; a value near 1 means that the installations are most different.

  4. 4.

    The other way round “Did you ever share plug-ins with colleagues?” and “Which way did you use to share these plug-ins?” provide a nearly identical pictures.

  5. 5.

    This citation also shows how subtle the balance between autonomy and cooperative integration is constructed: The seasoned developer submits an individualized offer, but respecting the autonomy and the tool competence of the other, even if he is a novice. Below, we discuss this topic in more detail.

  6. 6.

    At first glance the expression “the real one” sounds strange. But a fine-grained analysis showed that he applies a conservative release policy (in respect to his colleague) using only major releases. His colleagues also use the innovation-oriented milestone builds, but as they are not that stable, they are “unreal”. We could validate this interpretation by using other interview passages. The case shows that Eclipse is updated quite often, which confirms the quantitative data (although the quantitative data also indicates a more ‘conservative’ or ‘rational’ update behavior, as we found no milestone build configuration in any of the 75 cases).

  7. 7.

    Here, the qualitative data explain what the quantitative study suggested, namely that some participants have more than one Eclipse configuration. Another reason is that developers sometimes working in several projects, where a different set of tools are needed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the participants for their time, Volker Wulf and Bernhard Nett for discussing earlier Versions of this paper and Thomas von Rekowski for his help preparing this document. The CoEUD project was funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Hölderlinstrasse 3, 57068, Siegen, Germany

    Gunnar Stevens & Sebastian Draxler

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  1. Gunnar Stevens
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  2. Sebastian Draxler
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Correspondence to Gunnar Stevens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , ICD/Tech-CICO Fre CNRS 2848, Universite de Technologie de Troyes, rue Marie Curie 12, Troyes Cedex, 10010, France

    Myriam Lewkowicz

  2. IEP, rue Gaston de Saporta 25, Aix-en-Provence, 13625, France

    Parina Hassanaly

  3. , Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen, Hölderlinstr. 3, Siegen, 57068, Germany

    Volker Wulf

  4. , Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen, Hoelderlinstr. 3, siegen, 57068, Germany

    Markus Rohde

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Stevens, G., Draxler, S. (2010). Appropriation of the Eclipse Ecosystem: Local Integration of Global Network Production. In: Lewkowicz, M., Hassanaly, P., Wulf, V., Rohde, M. (eds) Proceedings of COOP 2010. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-211-7_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-211-7_16

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