The strategic importance of software has long been acknowledged, but it is only in the last years that the economy and industry are experiencing a radical transformation where many product and service functions are defined by software (software-defined everything).
The European Commission, in view of the preparations of the Horizon 2020 Workprogramme for the period 2018-2019 was seeking feedback about the innovation potential of software technologies and the role of Open Source Software (OSS) as an innovation enabler.
Software is in need of innovation so that it can face the increase in volume, quality and domains of application. There are new domains where software was not a top priority but now it should be. These are for example health and medicine and also industries that produce physical goods (like agriculture, devices): for the latter, software has been a major source that had made innovation possible and now it has to keep pace.
The report offers in-depth views into requirements for software as an innovator and its increasing importance, its areas of innovation, open source software (OSS) and evolving critical systems. It concludes with recommendations for the European Commission about what kind of software should be funded in the future so that the innovation potential of software can be fully exploited