Buyer behavior · Peer-reviewed empirical study or research synthesis
Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects
Information Systems Research · 2006
Summary
License restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship interacted: users were most attracted to projects sponsored by nonmarket organizations and using nonrestrictive licenses. Licensing and sponsorship also addressed complementary developer motivations, so licensing’s relationship with development activity depended on sponsor type. Founder-use interpretation: Use this as a question to test in your own product context, not as a universal benchmark. The publisher abstract does not provide an explicit limitations section or a causal identification strategy. Because the evidence is observational and tied to Freshmeat.net/project-home-page listings, representativeness and causal interpretation beyond those projects remain uncertain.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use this as a question to test in your own product context, not as a universal benchmark. The publisher abstract does not provide an explicit limitations section or a causal identification strategy. Because the evidence is observational and tied to Freshmeat.net/project-home-page listings, representativeness and causal interpretation beyond those projects remain uncertain.
Reported result
What the study found
License restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship interacted: users were most attracted to projects sponsored by nonmarket organizations and using nonrestrictive licenses. Licensing and sponsorship also addressed complementary developer motivations, so licensing’s relationship with development activity depended on sponsor type.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects?
Design
Archival/observational empirical study using project data from Freshmeat.net and project home pages; the authors develop and test models of user interest and developer activity.
Sample and setting
Open-source software projects listed on Freshmeat.net, with project-home-page information; outcomes are user interest and development activity. The publisher abstract does not report a project count.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The publisher abstract does not provide an explicit limitations section or a causal identification strategy. Because the evidence is observational and tied to Freshmeat.net/project-home-page listings, representativeness and causal interpretation beyond those projects remain uncertain.
Research sources
Publisher record directly retrieved with Firecrawl (reference 01a122ca-e3e8-769a-8d79-d09f4d5f3992); summary is a careful paraphrase of the accessible record.