Using open source components in software product lines — An exploratory study

The software engineering community has been continuously discussing the concepts of software reuse since the community´s inception. The emergence of a reuse-intense development methodology, i.e. software product lines (SPLs), and the advances in open source software (OSS) have made reuse a current research topic. There are several studies available which explore the different dimensions of software reuse. Some of these have highlighted the factors affecting the reusability of software components in a component based development environment but use of OSS in SPLs is still an area to be explored. This paper reports on the issues relevant to OSS based SPL development, including the use of OSS in SPLs, the role of OSS in promoting reuse, current reuse practices, and challenges that OSS brings about. This paper describes the procedures carried out in conducting an interview based exploratory study and gives the results of the study.