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Crowdsource software development has become more and more popular in recent years in the software industry. Crowdsourcing is an open‐call technique for outsourcing tasks to a broad and undefined crowd. Crowdsourcing provides numerous advantages including reduced costs, fast project completion, talent identification, diversity of solutions, top‐quality, and access to problem‐solving creativity. Despite of the benefits gained from crowdsourcing, there are numerous issues like lack of experienced workers, lack of confidentiality, copyright issues, software sustainability, and so forth. There is also less focus on the long‐term sustainability of software development because of new ideas emerging in crowdsourcing software development. Furthermore, in literature, lack of guidelines towards sustainable software crowdsourcing is highlighted as one of the limitations in the software standards. This study aims to identify the factors that influence sustainability aspects in crowdsourced software development. We have conducted a systematic literature review for identification of these factors. In this paper, we present findings of the systematic literature review in the form of a list of 11 factors extracted from a sample of 45 finally selected papers. Among these factors, six of the factors are ranked as critical factors. These critical factors are "Lack of coding standard in documentation," "Use of popular programming tools," "Crowd Lack of knowledge and awareness about sustainability," "Energy‐efficient coding," "Lack of awareness about sustainable software engineering practices," and "Lack of coordination/communication between client and crowd." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architecture principles affect a software system holistically. Given their alignment with a business strategy, they should be incorporated within the validation process covering aspects of sustainability. However, current research discusses the influence of architecture principles on sustainability in a limited context. Our objective was to introduce a reusable process for monitoring and evaluating the impact of architecture principles on sustainability from a software architecture perspective. We sought to demonstrate the application of such a process in professional practice. A qualitative case study was conducted in the context of a Dutch airport management company. Data collection involved a case analysis and the execution of two rounds of expert interviews. We (i) identified a set of case-related key performance indicators, (ii) utilized commonly accepted measurement tools, and (iii) employed graphical representations in the form of spider charts to monitor the sustainability impacts. The real-world observations were evaluated through a concluding focus group. Our findings indicated that architecture principles were a feasible mechanism with which to address sustainability across all different architecture layers within the enterprise. The experts considered the sustainability analysis valuable in guiding the software architecture process towards sustainability. With the emphasis on principles, we facilitate industry adoption by embedding sustainability in existing mechanisms.

Architecture principles affect a software system holistically. Given their alignment with a business strategy, they should be incorporated within the validation process covering aspects of sustainability. However, current research discusses the influence of architecture principles on sustainability in a limited context. Our objective was to introduce a reusable process for monitoring and evaluating the impact of architecture principles on sustainability from a software architecture perspective. We sought to demonstrate the application of such a process in professional practice. A qualitative case study was conducted in the context of a Dutch airport management company. Data collection involved a case analysis and the execution of two rounds of expert interviews. We (i) identified a set of case-related key performance indicators, (ii) utilized commonly accepted measurement tools, and (iii) employed graphical representations in the form of spider charts to monitor the sustainability impacts. The real-world observations were evaluated through a concluding focus group. Our findings indicated that architecture principles were a feasible mechanism with which to address sustainability across all different architecture layers within the enterprise. The experts considered the sustainability analysis valuable in guiding the software architecture process towards sustainability. With the emphasis on principles, we facilitate industry adoption by embedding sustainability in existing mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It's been four years since the formation of the Python in Heliophysics Community (PyHC). In that time, the community has made great strides towards embodying and implementing the ideals of a "Heliophysics Framework" put forth by Burrell et al. (2018). Specifically, the components of such a framework include: 1) centralization of current Python packages, 2) increasing accessibility and connectivity of these projects, 3) consideration of software attribution issues, and 4) the establishment and implementation of best practices and standards for code development. We describe the manner in which, and to what extent, PyHC has realized these four tenants. We then set forth suggestions for advancing PyHC's efforts, including ways in which we can improve our information architecture, how we can grow our community, both in terms of project sustainability and usage, as well as the social component of the community itself, how we can improve PyHC package integration, and finally, non-Python library considerations. The suggested improvements and additions therein advance PyHC's mission and strategic goals, while helping better integrate PyHC into the broader Heliophysics and Space Weather community efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a use-case for balancing the demands of commercial intellectual property and open-source in a collaborative scientific software project.

The article focuses on artificial intelligence systems that have been the focus of much public debate, the environmental dimension of sustainability of AI systems has received less attention. Topics include examines AI development and use, for instance, require energy and cause high emissions and the broader environmental effects of using AI systems in other fields of society.

As recognition of the vital importance of software for contemporary research is increasing, Research Software Engineering (RSE) is emerging as a discipline in its own right. We present an inventory of relevant research questions about RSE as a basis for future research and initiatives to advance the field, highlighting selected literature and initiatives. This work is the outcome of a RSE community workshop held as part of the 2020 International Series of Online Research Software Events (SORSE) which identified and prioritized key questions across three overlapping themes: people, policy and infrastructure. Almost half of the questions focus on the people theme, which addresses issues related to career paths, recognition and motivation; recruitment and retention; skills; and diversity, equity and inclusion. However, the people and policy themes have the same number of prioritized questions. We recommend that different types of stakeholders, such as RSE employers and policy makers, take responsibility for supporting or encouraging answering of these questions by organizations that have an interest. Initiatives such as the International Council of RSE Associations should also be engaged in this work.

Software is essential for scientific research and is applied in research methodology, data analysis, and knowledge dissemination. Scientists believe that software plays a crucial role in their research process, so it is necessary to recognize the contribution of software developers. This study aims to investigate the current situation of software citation in scientific research and explore possible solutions to improve its sustainability via full-text content analysis. There is a gap between the use and the citation of software in scientific publications, and the lack of information in software citations has been a source of both failure and improvement of software in scientific research. We found various deficiencies that hinder the durability of software citations and put forward some suggestions for their stability and development, such as designing software citation standards, promoting free open licensing of scientific software, and implementing strict peer review of software citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability incorporation within the field of Software Engineering is an emerging research area. Sustainability, from an academic perspective, has been addressed to a large extent. However, when it comes to the software industry, the topic has not received much-needed attention. Software, being designed and developed in the industry, can benefit society at large, if sustainability is taken into account by the software professionals during the software design and development process. To develop a sustainable software application, knowledge and awareness about sustainability by professional software developers is one of the key elements. This study is an attempt to examine sustainability knowledge, importance, and support from the perspective of South Asian software professionals. Additionally, this study also proposes sustainability guidelines for certain software applications and also a catalog for the identification of sustainability requirements for different software applications. The queries such as 'What does sustainability mean to a professional software developer?', 'How does the software industry identify sustainability requirements?', 'How do software developers incorporate the sustainability parameters within software during software development?', and many other such queries are addressed in this study. To achieve this goal, a survey was carried out among 221 industry practitioners involved in software projects in various application domains such as banking, finance, and management applications. The results pinpoint that even though sustainability is deemed important by 91% of practitioners, still there is a lack of understanding regarding sustainability incorporation in software development. A total of 48% of professionals often misunderstand "Green software" as "sustainable software". The technical aspect of sustainability is considered most important by professionals (67%) as well as companies (77%). One of the key findings of this study is that 92% of software practitioners are not able to identify sustainability requirements for software applications. The outcomes of the study may be regarded as an initial attempt towards how sustainability is comprehended in software by the South Asian software industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the evaluation of the software industry, a huge number of software applications are designing, developing, and uploading to multiple online repositories. To find out the same type of category and resource utilization of applications, researchers must adopt manual working. To reduce their efforts, a solution has been proposed that works in two phases. In first phase, a semantic analysis-based keywords and variables identification process has been proposed. Based on the semantics, designed a dataset having two classes: one represents application type and the other corresponds to application keywords. Afterward, in second phase, input preprocessed dataset to manifold machine learning techniques (Decision Table, Random Forest, OneR, Randomizable Filtered Classifier, Logistic model tree) and compute their performance based on TP Rate, FP Rate, Precision, Recall, F1-Score, MCC, ROC Area, PRC Area, and Accuracy (%). For evaluation purposes, We have used an R language library called latent semantic analysis for creating semantics, and the Weka tool is used for measuring the performance of algorithms. Results show that the random forest depicts the highest accuracy which is 99.3% due to its parametric function evaluation and less misclassification error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability and longevity of software systems rely on the quality of design decisions over time. In modern software-intensive systems the number of design decisions taken, the dependencies between those decisions, and the number of design alternatives considered, complicate software maintenance and jeopardize the system's longevity. Despite the existence of complexity metrics applied to code, there is a lack of metrics for design decisions. As estimating the complexity of a set of design decisions is needed for understanding the difficulty of software evolution, this paper proposes and validates a new metric to estimate the complexity of decision networks. The metric is based on decision topologies and provides a way to understand the complexity of decision sets and reason about the maintenance difficulty. We validate our metric empirically in two different ways: (i) evaluating the complexity of two service-based platform systems, and (ii) analyzing the evolution of complexity in four open-source projects and compare how the evolution of complexity affects to the architecture in one of the open-source projects. Our results show that certain network topologies are more difficult to maintain, so we provide a set of tactics to reduce the complexity of design decision networks.

Usability plays an important role in eHealth applications for their widespread adoption. These software systems have been studied in depth in the literature from this perspective. However, the energy consumption of information systems in the eHealth domain lacks comprehensive research. In this paper, the relationship between the energy consumption of the main components of a PC and the usability evaluations of graphical user interfaces (GUI) were studied in client applications. For this purpose, personal health records (PHR) were used as a case study. A set of 4 web-based PHRs were evaluated with the performance of 20 common tasks in the aforementioned systems. The usability evaluations were carried out by 4 experts. A total of 8 heuristics particularly designed for electronic health record systems and based on the Nielsen usability heuristics were employed. The instantaneous energy values of the power supply and the monitor were collected with an energy consumption measuring equipment. As a result, the following significant correlations were found. In NoMoreClipboard between the Memory heuristic and the power supply (rs = 0.495, p = 0.044), and the Minimalist heuristic and the monitor (rs = − 0.513, p = 0.035). In PatientsLikeMe between the Minimalist heuristic and the power supply (rs = − 0.479, p = 0.083), as well as in the Error heuristic and the power supply (rs = − 0.638, p = 0.014). Finally, in Health Companion between the Match heuristic and the power supply (rs = − 0.481, p = 0.043), and the Error heuristic and the power supply again (rs = − 0.602, p = 0.008). Apart from that, the tasks were divided into those with excellent and fair usability. Those tasks with high usability scores were evaluated to detect whether they also had low energy consumption during task performance. Significant differences were found in PatientsLikeMe with respect to the Error heuristic and the power supply (212.39 ± 18.85W). Significant differences were also found in Health Companion with respect to the Match heuristic and the power supply (199.91 ± 7.19W). The results were discussed to reveal the fundamentals of how implementing usability can impact on energy costs when running client applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy consumption of software has been becoming increasingly significant, since it can vary according to how the software has been developed. In recent years, developers and researchers have been interested in analyzing, among other things, how energy consumption evolves when changes occur from one version to another in any given software. Thus far, the only studies available are theoretical papers that reinforce the idea that maintainability may have an influence on energy use, but this needs to be proven empirically, which is the goal of this article. This work presents an empirical study carried out to test whether there is a relationship between the energy consumption and the maintainability of several versions of Redmine. Maintainability has been assessed by means of different measures, such as the number of lines of code, or the complexity of the software, calculated using SonarCloud, and the energy consumption measurements have been captured using the EET device. The results obtained show that the number of lines of code affects both the energy consumption of the processor and the total consumption of the computer where the software is run. It is intended that the results from this work should serve as a basis for the undertaking of new empirical studies which will enable the relationship between the software maintainability and the energy efficiency of that software to be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software is a key factor in the functioning of today's world. Software is supposed to have some characteristics such as: reliability, security, etc., but it is not at all easy to find energy efficiency considered as being one of software's most important features. Aspects related to Green Software have begun to be considered vital and basic, due to pressure from a society which is becoming more and more aware of environmental problems. In this paper we want to explore whether software companies, responsible for developing software, are aligning their strategies with environmental concerns. To do so, we have checked the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies of the ten most important software companies and looked at these documents with reference to the UN's sustainable development goals. A well-defined method for carrying out the analysis of the CSR policies led the authors to identify which of the sustainability actions proposed can be classified within any of the software sustainability dimensions. The analysis of these actions shows that sustainability is considered in most of the companies; nonetheless, most attention is currently devoted to hardware-based initiatives intended to reduce the carbon footprint of the hardware resources of the companies. In addition, green software initiatives are still not the priority, despite the influence of software on energy consumption, and in spite of its impact on the environment. Using the set of actions selected, a set of specific actions for software sustainability, to be included in the CSR of software companies, has been defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software is the key crosscutting technology that enables advances in mathematics, computer science, and domain-specific science and engineering to achieve robust simulations and analysis for science, engineering, and other research fields. However, software itself has not traditionally received focused attention from research communities; rather, software has evolved organically and inconsistently, with its development largely as by-products of other initiatives. Moreover, challenges in scientific software are expanding due to disruptive changes in computer hardware, increasing scale and complexity of data, and demands for more complex simulations involving multiphysics, multiscale modeling and outer-loop analysis. In recent years, community members have established a range of grass-roots organizations and projects to address these growing technical and social challenges in software productivity, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability. This article provides an overview of such groups and discusses opportunities to leverage their synergistic activities while nurturing work toward emerging software ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Software systems have a strong impact on the energy consumption of the hardware they use. This is especially important for cyber-physical systems where power consumption strongly influences the battery life. For this reason, software developers should be more aware of the energy consumed by their systems. Moreover, software systems should be developed to adapt their behavior to minimize the energy consumed during their execution. This can be done by monitoring the usage context of the system and having runtime support to react to those changes that impact the energy footprint negatively. Although both the hardware and the software parts of cyber-physical systems can be adapted to reduce its energy consumption, this paper focuses on software adaptation. Concretely, the paper illustrates how to address the problem of developing context-aware energy-efficient applications using a Green Eco-Assistant that makes use of advanced software engineering methods, such as Dynamic Software Product Lines and Separation of Concerns. The main steps of our approach are illustrated by applying them to a cyber-physical system case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]