Tomasz Tunguz recently had a post exploring the relationship between open source licenses and exits (either funding or acquisition). When I first saw this, I was excited. The practical consequences of license selection is an area of particular interest to me. Sadly, the article was terrible.

Tunguz compares funded project license distribution to total open source license distribution. This is a fatal flaw since there is no evidence to suggest that these are drawn from the same population. Many open source projects are small hobbyist efforts. Even large ones can be predominantly volunteer-driven, with no intention of seeing venture funding or acquisition. That alone is enough to render the comparison meaningless. A better study would examine projects looking for funding and see if any license is correlated with better results.

The article is titled “Which Open Source License Should Your Project Use if You Want to Raise Venture Capital?” but fails to answer the question. It does not even establish whether or not the license selection matters. Even if a full statistical study wasn’t feasible, commentary from a variety of VCs could help provide guidance.

Licenses are chosen for a variety of reasons. Some are philosophical, some are practical. Choose the one that fits your project best. If that means finding out which licenses the VC firms you’ll target prefer, do that. If it means using the license that’s common to the ecosystem your project lives in, do that. Just don’t rely on a few slapped-together bar charts with no credibility.