Software Ecosystem: Understanding an Indispensable Technology & Industry

Description

Software has gone from obscurity to indispensability in less than fifty years. Although other industries have followed a similar trajectory, software and its supporting industry are different. In this book the authors explain, from a variety of perspectives, how software and the software industry are different--technologically, organizationally, and socially.The growing importance of software requires professionals in all fields to deal with both its technical and social aspects; therefore, users and producers of software need a common vocabulary to discuss software issues. In Software Ecosystem, Messerschmitt and Szyperski address the overlapping and related perspectives of technologists and nontechnologists. After an introductory chapter on technology, the book is organized around six points of view: users, and what they need software to accomplish for them; software engineers and developers, who translate the user's needs into program code; managers, who must orchestrate the resources, material and human, to operate the software; industrialists, who organize companies to produce and distribute software; policy experts and lawyers, who must resolve conflicts inside and outside the industry without discouraging growth and innovation; and economists, who offer insights into how the software market works. Each chapter considers not only the issues most relevant to that perspective but also relates those issues to the other perspectives as well. Nontechnologists will appreciate the context in which technology is discussed; technical professionals will gain more understanding of the social issues that should be considered in order to make software more useful and successful.


Contents:

Prefacexi
1Introduction1
1.1What Makes Software Interesting?2
1.2Organization and Summary7
1.3Research and Discussion Issues11
2Information Technology13
2.1Information14
2.2The Constituents of IT21
2.3Moore's Law26
2.4Research and Discussion Issues37
2.5Further Reading39
3Users41
3.1Applications Present and Future42
3.2User Value49
3.3Research and Discussion Issues63
3.4Further Reading65
4Creating Software67
4.1Elements of Success68
4.2Organizing Software Creation69
4.3Software Architecture84
4.4Program Distribution and Execution94
4.5Distributed Software106
4.6Research and Discussion Issues118
4.7Further Reading120
5Management121
5.1Value Chains122
5.2Total Cost of Ownership134
5.3Social Issues in Software Management135
5.4Security as a Distributed Management Example145
5.5Research and Discussion Issues166
5.6Further Reading169
6Software Supply Industry171
6.1Industrial Organization and Software Architecture171
6.2Organization of the Software Value Chain173
6.3Business Relationships in the Software Value Chain185
6.4Research and Discussion Issues196
6.5Further Reading197
7Software Creation Industry199
7.1Industrial Organization of the Software Industry199
7.2Cooperation in the Software Industry229
7.3Component Software244
7.4Research and Discussion Issues263
7.5Further Reading265
8Government267
8.1Intellectual Property267
8.2Regulation284
8.3Research and Education299
8.4Research and Discussion Issues306
8.5Further Reading308
9Economics309
9.1Demand310
9.2Supply323
9.3Pricing327
9.4Rationale for Infrastructure338
9.5Software as an Economic Good343
9.6Research and Discussion Issues347
9.7Further Reading349
10The Future351
10.1Slowing Technological Advance351
10.2Information Appliances353
10.3Pervasive Computing355
10.4Mobile and Nomadic IT357
10.5Research and Discussion Issues360
10.6Further Reading360
Postscript361
Notes365
Glossary375
References391
About the Authors403
Name Index405
Subject Index