Development Success in Open Source Software Projects:Exploring the Impact of Copylefted Licenses

摘要

Copyleft prevents the source code of open source software (OSS) from being privately appropriated. The ethos of the OSSmovement suggests that volunteer developers may particularly value and contribute to copylefted projects. Based on socialmovement theory, we hypothesized that copylefted OSS projects are more likely than non-copylefted OSS projects tosucceed in the development process, in terms of two key indicators: developer membership and developer productivity. Weperformed an exploratory study using data from 62 relevant OSS projects spanning an average of three years of developmenttime. We found that copylefted projects were associated with higher developer membership and productivity. This is the firststudy to empirically test the relationship between copylefted licenses and OSS project success. Implications for OSS projectinitiators as well as future research directions are discussed.