Coevolution of information ecosystems

Abstract

With the increasing use of information technology, information ecosystems have emerged. Information ecosystems not only include software products, but also include hardware products. For example, application software depends on system software, and both application software and system software depend on hardware devices. Together, they play important roles in an information ecosystem. This paper analyzes the coevolution of information ecosystem, where three representatives of computer hardware, system software, and application software products are studied. Specifically, we analyze (1) the growth rate of Intel processors, Linux operating systems, and Apache web servers; and (2) the statistical relations among the evolution of Intel processors, Linux operating systems, and Apache web servers. Our study finds that a system software product grows slower than its supporting hardware products and a application software product grows slower than its supporting system software and hardware products.