International Business Machines Corporation
Method and system for provenance tracking in software ecosystems

Abstract:

A system and method for tracking provenance for software use and development includes a developer toolkit program stored in memory and accessible by a software market place, the software marketplace providing a library of software bundles usable for software development and modification of the software bundles. The developer toolkit includes a user interface configured to enable software creation of original works and derivative works. The development toolkit further includes a provenance tracker configured to track provenance of the derivative works and original works wherein the provenance tracker makes the derivative work and the provenance of the derivative work available in the software market place. The provenance tracker includes a software bundle identification module configured to identify and verify ownership of the original works and derivative works by associating an owner of the derivative works and original works with features included in portions of the derivative works and original works.