Research on software ecosystems still is a young and emerging field. While many researchers are active in this field, vibrant research communities still have to be built. This is why we created the European workshop on software ecosystems: to bring together researchers from all over Europe to present and discuss software ecosystem topics. To make sure that the research is mirrored with real problems in software business, we invited professionals from software companies to join the discussion and they made up about half of the audience at the workshop. Walldorf, Germany, December 2014 Peter Buxmann, Thomas Aidan Curran, Slinger Jansen, Thomas Kude, Karl Michael Popp 2014 EWSECO SESSIONS: 1. INDUSTRY KEYNOTE SOFTWARE M&A ECOSYSTEMS -- HOW TO FIND THE BEST BUYERS 2. WHEN ECOSYSTEM INVESTMENTS FAIL (WHY DIRECT INVESTMENTS IN ECOSYSTEM PLAYERS OFTEN BACKFIRES) 3. INDUSTRY KEYNOTE THE FUTURE OF OPEN SOURCE: HELLO GENERATION.OPEN! 4. SAP GANGES - AN ECO-SYSTEM FOR THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID 5. WHY CAN'T THEY BUILD APPS? EFFECTIVE DEVELOPER SUPPORT STRUCTURES IN DIGITAL PLATFORMS 6. NDUSTRY KEYNOTE TITLE HOW SAAS/PAAS IMPACTS SOFTWARE ECOSYSTEMS 45 7. FROM DATA TO ACTIONABLE APPS: A CONSUMPTION-BASED APPROACH TO THE LINKED DATA ECOSYSTEM 8. HOW TO ENACT SOFTWARE ECOSYSTEMS - KEY LESSONS LEARNED IN PLATFORM THOUGHT LEADERSHIP COUNCIL A big thank you! Many people have helped in creating this third workshop and the proceedings. First and foremost, I would like to thank the presenters for their submissions and presentations and standing the heat in the discussions at the workshop. Secondly, I appreciate the support from my colleagues in the program committee. Thirdly, many thanks to the sponsors of EWSECO, who made the workshop possible, like German Management Consulting GmbH, Synomic GmbH, fluid operations AG, Netfira GmbH and Partner-Port Walldorf. Special thanks go to Netfira as the proceedings sponsor. Keep the software ecosystems community alive! Dr. Karl Michael