An Approach for Community Smells with Power Relationship Dynamics in Proprietary Software Ecosystems

Abstract

Community smells refer to unfavorable socio-technical patterns in software development community structures that might exist and lead to a variety of issues, such as loss of key information in any software ecosystem (SECO). These ecosystems also involve power relationships, which have an impact on products and bring challenges. This work proposes to investigate and analyze the relationship between community smells and power relationship dynamics in proprietary software ecosystems (PSECO). By identifying the community smells that may exist in SECO, community members and academics can improve their knowledge and process management, software quality, and the development process, among others.