Steering insight: An exploration of the Ruby software ecosystem

Abstract

Software products are part of a larger network of products, suppliers and partners, called a software ecosystem, working together in order to provide functionality for the users and generate profit for the vendors. Not much is known about the characteristics and relationships within such a software ecosystem. This paper presents an overview of the open source Ruby ecosystem and lists its elements, characteristics, descriptives, roles, cliques and relationships. Data is gathered using the Git decentralized source code management system and is analyzed using social network and statistical analysis techniques. Our analysis shows that the Ruby ecosystem exists out of a couple very distinctive roles developers fulfil. It also shows that within the Ruby ecosystem only a small 'core' of approximately 10% of all developers and gems (Ruby packages) are dominant within the ecosystem. At this point in time it appears that the rails community would benefit from motivating current developers to work together more, instead of supporting new developers or gems in order to get a healthy ecosystem. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.