A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective of Software Reuse in the Digital Age: An Agenda for IS Research

Most software on which we rely to help us organize our professional and personal lives is based on the reuse of other pieces of software that are created and maintained by groups of software developers that work independently from one another. Oftentimes, these groups simply publish their software in the form of self-contained packages available on dedicated repositories, facilitating the widespread diffusion of their work. Whereas the production and publication of software packages fosters unprecedented levels of digital innovation, there are also drawbacks associated with software reuse (e.g., as was publicly discussed in 2021 with the discovery of the Log4Shell vulnerability). Building on previous research, our work explores the implications associated with the unprecedented scale and uncoordinated nature of packaged software reuse. We use complex adaptive systems as a generative lens to help us conceptualize the phenomenon and identify promising avenues for research and practice on this topic. Our work, therefore, draws attention to the importance of the packaged software reuse phenomenon as well as the need for research to help increase our understanding of its nature and implications considering its prevalence in software development practice and the overall importance of software in our everyday lives.