Software reuse and competition: Consumer preferences in a software component market

Research on software reuse has traditionally focused on reuse among employees within the same organization. In contrast, our research investigates consumer preferences in a software component market with multiple producers and consumers of software components. We propose that empirically studying competition in software component markets is crucial to discovering success factors for improving software reuse. To facilitate such research, we have developed an experimental market laboratory called SofTrade; we report here the results of two empirical studies made possible by this environment. Our results support some existing reuse maxims, such as the concept that consumers prefer to reuse components that are general and flexible. Other established reuse beliefs are not supported by our results, such as the expectation that consumers will prefer objects with unique, complex features. Overall, the research reported here strongly supports the claim that the practice of exploring software reuse activity within real or artificial software component markets produces unique insights into how we can improve software reuse.