  Every open source project needs to decide on an open source license. This
decision is of high economic relevance: Just which license is the best one to
help the project grow and attract a community? The most common question is:
Should the project choose a restrictive (reciprocal) license or a more
permissive one? As an important step towards answering this question, this
paper analyses actual license choice and correlated project growth from ten
years of open source projects. It provides closed analytical models and finds
that around 2001 a reversal in license choice occurred from restrictive towards
permissive licenses.
