Towards ecosystem research in the software engineering

The application of the concept of the ecosystem in the software engineering shows the existence of the same problems regarding the definition of the concept of the ecosystem and its use for research that still exists in ecology. Justification for applying the ecosystem concept in the area that differs significantly from the ecology, as in our case, requires researchers to look for analogies. This primarily applies to landscape, energy and matter transfer chains (trophic chains) and nutritional cycles. Until such analogies are found in software engineering, ecosystem research will be nothing more than system analysis, and the concept of the ecosystem is an attractive concept. The purpose of this article is to draw the attention of the software engineering community to ecosystem research. Three concepts of ecosystems in ecology, software and software engineering are considered. The composition and essence of ecosystem research in the software engineering are given. The literature review of the state of the ecosystem research for software ecosystems has been carried out.