The Metropolis Model and its Implications for the Engineering of Software Ecosystems

摘要

In this paper, we claim that existing models of software engineering and software development lifecycles are seriously out of touch with some of the most important systems in the world-those that are created as a result of commons-based peer production (sometimes known as "crowdsourcing"). To be relevant, software engineering needs a new model of how such software is to be created, maintained, and operated. We propose just such a new model, called the Metropolis Model, which attempts to capture and provide a framework for reasoning about this new and increasingly important form of software-intensive system production.