开源许可证的选择:挑战和影响因素  

Selection of Open Source License:Challenges and Influencing Factors

作　　者：吴欣 武健宇 周明辉[1,2] 王志强 杨丽蕴 WU Xin;WU Jian-Yu;ZHOU Ming-Hui;WANG Zhi-Qiang;YANG Li-Yun(Key Lab of High Confidence Software Technologies(Peking University),Ministry of Education,Beijing 100871,China;School of Computer Science,Peking University,Beijing 100871,China;College of Computer and Information Science/College of Software,Southwest University,Chongqing 400715,China;China Electronics Standardization Institute,Beijing 100010,China)

机构地区：[1]高可信软件技术教育部重点实验室(北京大学),北京100871 [2]北京大学计算机学院,北京100871 [3]西南大学计算机与信息科学学院/软件学院,重庆400715 [4]中国电子技术标准化研究院,北京100010

出　　处：《软件学报》2022年第1期1-25,共25页Journal of Software

基　　金：国家重点研发计划(2018YFB1004201);国家自然科学基金(61825201)。

摘　　要：开发者通常会为其开源代码选择不同的开源许可证来约束其使用条件,以期能有效地保护知识产权和维持软件的长远发展.然而,现有的开源许可证种类繁杂,开发者难以了解不同开源许可证间的差异,并且难以通过现有的开源许可证选择工具做出合适的选择——其使用要求开发者了解开源许可证相关条款并明确自己的业务需求.学术界虽然对开源许可证已有研究,但是对开发者选择开源许可证的实际困难并无系统的分析进而缺乏清晰的认知.有鉴于此,旨在从开源开发者角度出发,理解其选择开源许可证的困难,并通过分析开源许可证的组成要素和影响开源许可证选择的因素,为开源许可证的选择提供借鉴.设计问卷并随机调研了参与GitHub开源项目的200名开发者.通过对53个反馈结果采用主题分析,发现开发者选择开源许可证通常面临条款内容太复杂和考虑因素不确定这两方面的困难.通过分析GitHub上3346168个代码仓库中使用最广泛的10种开源许可证,建立了包含10个维度的开源许可证框架.通过借鉴计划行为理论,从行为态度、主观规范和知觉行为控制3方面提出了影响许可证选择的9大要素,通过开发者调研验证了它们的相关性,并进一步通过拟合次序回归模型验证了项目特征与许可证选择的关系.研究结果能加深开发者对开源许可证内容的理解,为开发者结合自身需求选择合适的许可证提供决策支持,并为实现基于用户需求的开源许可证选择工具提供借鉴.Developers usually select different open source licenses to restrain the conditions of using open source software,in order to protect intellectual property rights effectively and maintain the long-term development of the software.However,since the open source community has a wide variety of licenses available,developers generally find it difficult to understand the differences between different open source licenses.And existing selection tools of open source license require developers to understand the terms of the open source license and identify their business needs,which makes it harder for developers to make the right choice.Although there has been extensive research on open source license,there is still no systematic analysis on the actual difficulties of the developers to choose the open source license,thus lacking a clear understanding.For this reason,this study attempts to understand the difficulties faced by open source developers in choosing open source licenses,analyzes the components of open source license and the factors influencing open source license selection,and to provides references for developers to choose open source licenses.This study conducts a random survey of 200 developers that participated in the open source projects on GitHub through questionnaires.With a Thematic Synthesis on the 53 feedbacks,it is found that developers often face difficulties in the selection of open source licenses in terms of complexity of terms and unknown considerations.By analyzing the ten open source licenses most widely used in 3346168 repositories on GitHub,this study establishes a framework of open source licenses that contains 10 dimensions.Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior,Nine factors that affect license selection from three aspects are put forward:behavior attitude,subjective norm,and perceived behavior control.The relevance of those factors is verified by developer survey.Furthermore,the relationship between project characteristics and license selection is verified by fitting the order regressi

关 键 词：开源许可证 开源许可证框架 开源许可证选择 开源许可证选择的影响因素 

分 类 号：TP311[自动化与计算机技术—计算机软件与理论]