The approach is based on a paradigm of self-organized criticality proposed for experimental investigation and theoretical modeling of software evolution. The dynamics of modifications is studied for three free, open source programs Mozilla, Free-BSD, and Emacs using the data from version control systems. Scaling laws typical for the self-organization criticality are found. The model of software evolution presenting the natural selection principle is proposed. The results of numerical and analytical investigation of the model are presented. They are in good agreement with the data collected for the real-world software.