A study on third party component reuse in Java enterprise open source software

Recent studies give empirical evidence that much of today's software is to a large extent built on preexisting software, such as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and open source software components. In this exploratory study we want to contribute to this small but increasing body of knowledge by investigating third party component reuse in 36 Java web applications that are open source and are meant to be used in an enterprise context. Our goal is to get a better understanding on how third party components are reused in web applications and how to better support it. The results are in line with existing research in this field. 70 third party components are being reused on average. 50 percent of the 40 most reused third party components are maintained by the Apache Foundation. Further research questions based on the study results were generated and are presented at the end of this paper.