Type of Document	Master's Thesis
Author	Brewer VIII, John
Author's Email Address	jb8@vt.edu
URN	etd-05142012-215203
Title	The Effects of Open Source License Choice on Software Reuse
Degree	Master of Science
Department	Computer Science
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Frakes, William B. Committee Chair Egyhazy, Csaba J. Committee Member Kulczycki, Gregory W. Committee Member
Keywords	Open Source License Software Reuse Dependency Analysis Package Repository
Date of Defense	2012-05-04
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract Previous research shows that software reuse can have a positive impact on software de- velopment economics, and that the adoption of a specific open source license can influ- ence how a software product is received by users and programmers. This study attempts to bridge these two research areas by examining how the adoption of an open source li- cense affects software reuse. Two reuse metrics were applied to 9,570 software packages contained in the Fedora Linux software repository. Each package was evaluated to deter- mine how many external components it reuses, as well as how many times it is reused by other software packages. This data was divided into subsets according to license type and software category. The study found that, in general, (1) software released under a restrictive license reuse more external components than software released under a per- missive license, and (2) that software released under a permissive license is more likely to be reused than software released under a restrictive license. However, there are ex- ceptions to these conclusions, as the effect of license choice on reuse varies by software category.
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