For more than a decade, software engineering for systems-of-systems (SoS) and software ecosystems (SECO) has been largely investigated in order to cope with complexity in software-intensive systems. SoS research addresses several aspects related to software system architecture comprising a set of constituent systems that relate to each other to perform missions. As such, SoS have key characteristics such as operational and managerial independence, distribution, emergent behavior, and evolutionary development. Full interoperability and dynamic architecture become critical challenges in this context. On the hand, SECO research refers to modeling and analysis of a socio-technical network of actors and artifacts formed on top of common technological platforms, in which business factors directly influence software maintenance and evolution. Software sustainability and diversity as well as quality attributes that affect the SECO platform health represent challenges in the field. From the long-running, successful series of the International Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems and Software Ecosystems (SESoS), co-located with the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), we present this special issue on the topics in the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process from SESoS 2023 in Melbourne, Australia. Four articles were accepted and published in this special issue, covering a longitudinal analysis of SoS research, as well as strategic patterns, services, and trust in SECO. These articles provide researchers and practitioners with advances in the state of the art and point out opportunities for further research.
Santos et al. (2025) studied this question.
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