Software Sustainability: Beyond the Tower of Babel

Abstract: There is currently no agreed definition of the concept. Current definitions range from a composite, non-functional requirement to simply an emergent property. This lack of clarity leads to confusion, and potentially to ineffective and inefficient efforts to develop sustainable software systems. Fundamental to the establishment of a Body of Knowledge for Software Sustainability is a clear definition of software sustainability. Our aim is to explore the range of definitions of software sustainability in order for the software engineering community to move towards a consensus on how software sustainability is defined and understood, which lays the foundation to demonstrate how technical sustainability can be measured.