Licenses as a Service

A developer-friendly tool to explore, compare, and integrate software and data licenses. Inspired by choosealicense.com, with added metadata and API access for automation.

Why This Project Exists

The choosealicense.com is a great reference, but it has some limitations:

• It is GitHub-specific, reflecting GitHub’s policy on license visibility and use.
• It limits the number of licenses shown, omitting many OSI-approved or widely-used alternatives.
• It focuses more on encouraging license use than on neutral license comparison.

This repository is intended to provide:

• A more complete and neutral catalog of software and data licenses
• Machine-readable metadata for reuse in other tools or websites
• An API-ready format for program-to-program integration

License Rules and Metadata

Each license includes a list of rules declared in data/rules.json. These are grouped into three categories:

• Permissions – What the license explicitly allows (e.g., commercial use, modification)
• Conditions – What the license requires (e.g., attribution, share-alike)
• Limitations – What the license prohibits or disclaims (e.g., warranty, liability)

The full set of rules is defined in rules.json. See the complete rule documentation in /docs/RULES.md.

License

• Code licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.
• Content under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

License Rules Used in This Project

Apache License 2.0

Permissions:

• commercial-use
• modifications
• distribution
• patent-use
• private-use

Conditions:

• include-copyright
• document-changes

Limitations:

• trademark-use
• liability
• warranty

CC0 1.0 Universal

Permissions:

• commercial-use
• modifications
• distribution
• private-use

Conditions:

• (None — this license imposes no conditions.)

Limitations:

• liability
• trademark-use
• patent-use
• warranty

Contributing

Please check out our Contributing guide for details.