Open Source Software Development Projects: Determinants of Project Popularity

Abstract

This paper is an initial exploration of the determinants of open source project success as measured by project popularity. We simultaneously model the impact of project-specific characteristics on project popularity, and the impact of intended users and choice of operating system on the choice of end-user license. These models are jointly estimated using Full Information Maximum Likelihood Method. The results show that the software-user license, age of the project, project status, certain types of potential users, and compatibility with certain operating systems have a statistically significant impact on project popularity. An interesting finding is that GPL, the most widely used software license has an adverse impact on the popularity of an open source project.Open source project, OSS, FLOSS