What is "internetware"

Internetware is a term coined to describe the emerging software paradigm for the Internet computing environment. It also refers to the software exhibiting the desired properties (described below) to meet the requirements of the Internet environment.

The Internet is a dynamic, open, ever-changing environment. These characteristics impose new requirements on software over Internet. More specifically, in traditional software, the requirements of the tasks are often pre-determined and clearly stated, and the tasks are performed by pre-designed software components following fixed algorithms. On the other hand, in the Internet computing environment, more and more requirements are unclear or undetermined, and the software components that collaborates to finish a task are dynamically obtained. As an example mentioned by Mei et al., handling swine flu epidemic requires emergent cooperation among organizational and individual software and services, such as airlines, hotels, hospitals and mobile phones. We do not know what components will be involved in the collaboration nor their behaviors. We also do not know what kind of collaboration needs to occur or will occur beforehand.