A Systematic Literature Review on Trust in the Software Ecosystem
This work addresses the need for a clearer understanding of trust relationships in software for researchers and practitioners, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing literature rather than introducing new empirical findings.
The paper tackled the problem of understanding trust in the software ecosystem by conducting a systematic literature review, resulting in a definition and theoretical framework for trust along with a list of trust factors.
We conduct a systematic literature review on the concept of trust in the worldwide software ecosystem. We acknowledge that trust is something between two actors in the software ecosystem, and we examine what role trust plays in the relationships between end-users and (1) software products, (2) package managers, (3) software producing organizations, and (4) software engineers. Two major findings emerged from the systematic literature review. To begin, we provide a definition of trust in the software ecosystem, including a theoretical framework that decomposes and signifies a theoretical understanding of trust. Second, we provide a list of trust factors that can be used to assemble an overview of software trust.