Research Opportunities in the Virtual Agora: Market Aspects of Open Resource Coalitions

For at least a decade, we have looked forward to an open market for software components and services. Recent advances in networking have created in the Internet a fertile environment for the creation and distribution of components, and we see a rich potential for value-added as well as primary goods. However, the economic infrastructure for an open market in software resources is still lacking, and support for automation of the marketplace is scant indeed. The prospect of automatically identifying, procuring, and integrating network-based resources intensifies the need to provide a robust economic infrastructure. We sketch the requirements for an electronic marketplace in software goods and services, explores some of the remaining shortfalls, and identify research opportunities.