Open source software for model driven development: A case study

Abstract

Model Driven Development (MDD) is widely used in the embedded systems domain, and many proprietary and Open Source tools exist that support MDD. The potential for sustainability of such tools needs to assessed prior to any organisational adoption. In this paper we report from a case study conducted in a consultancy company context aiming to investigate Open Source tools for MDD. For the company it was interesting to explore the two Open Source modelling tools Topcased and Papyrus for potential adoption. The focus for our case study is on assessing the health of the ecosystems for the two investigated Open Source projects by means of quantitative analysis of publically available data sources about Open Source projects. The health of ecosystems is an important prerequisite for a long term sustainable OSS (Open Source Software) tool-chain in the MDD area, which can aid strategic decision making for potential adoption within a company context. We have established details on the extent to which developers and users are active in two specific OSS ecosystems, and identified organisational influence for both ecosystems. We find that the investigated tools are promising regarding the health of their ecosystems, and a natural next step for the company would be to proceed with a pilot study in order to analyse the effectiveness of the investigated tools in company contexts.