A Preliminary Analysis of the Influences of Licensing and Organizational Sponsorship on Success in Open Source Projects

This paper develops and tests a model of the impact of licensing restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship on the popularity and vitality of open source software (OSS) development projects. Using data gathered from Freshmeat.net and OSS project home pages the main conclusions derived from the analysis are that organizational sponsorship has a positive effect on project popularity by easing user concerns about cost and quality and that license restrictiveness may have a negative effect on popularity by reducing the perceived utility of open source software. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and the paper outlines several avenues for future research.