Choice of Open Source Software Licenses : An Adaption to the Commercial Involvement

This paper tries to explore the mechanism of the choices of Open Source Software (OSS) Licenses. The benignant licensor choose between the restrictive and permissive licenses by considering how the commercial contributor reacts to the choice of OSS licenses to make the OSS project best supported with smallest damage the integrity of the OSS community. The licensor's choice of licenses is jointly determined by four factors: the OSS project's involvement benefit and its dependency on licensing, hijacking beneit and expected life time. Generally speaking, the licensing choices of OSS projects are qutie diversified. Both licensing triviality and licensing dilemma exist and this paper predicts a permissive trend in the future