A Nichesourcing Framework Applied to Software Sustainability Requirements

[Background] A software sustainability model is commonly defined in terms of social, economic, technical and environmental dimensions. A key challenge is its characterization regarding sustainability requirements and their dependencies since it depends on, and varies with, the type of software system, and changes in operational contexts. [Aims] With the purpose of facilitating the definition of a context-dependent software sustainability model, we introduce nichesourcing as a type of distributed problem-solving paradigm, named crowdsourcing. [Method] First a set of nichesourcing requirements were identified, and an existing nichesourcing methodology, originally used in the cultural heritage domain was analyzed with respect to its applicability in Software Engineering. [Results] As a result, we propose an adapted methodology for nichesourcing the knowledge on sustainability requirements and their dependencies. Strengths and challenges for crowdsourced software engineering are also identified.

keywords: crowdsourcing, dependency, sustainability requirements