We use a control framework to analyze the digital vendor's profitmaximization problem. The vendor captures market share by focusing costlyeffort on post-launch product maintenance, which influences user perception ofthe product and drives a revenue stream associated with product use. Ourtheoretical results show necessary and sufficient conditions for productmaintenance to decline over a product's life-cycle, thus showing conditionswhen Lehman's 7th law of software evolution holds. We also numericallyillustrate control paths under different market conditions.
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