Managing a Software Ecosystem Using a Multiple Software Product Line: a Case Study on Digital Signage Systems

With the advent of Web 2.0, the growth of developer teams and user communities increases the number of software ecosystems: software platforms developed and maintained in a decentralized way by external contributors. As complexity grows, these large software systems become more and more complex to manage and to adapt to specific user needs. In this paper, we report on a case study on the development of a digital signage software system called YourCast. Based on several years experience evolving YourCast from a single system to a medium-scale ecosystem, we show how organizing it as a multiple software product line helps in organizing the software platform, taming some management tasks for a growing community, and giving more capabilities to final users to build their own products.