Choosing an Open Source License

It’s easy to get caught up in code. Sharing your code isn’t everything, though: it’s also important to tell people how they can use that code.

Choosing an open source license can be confusing. We’ve created ChooseALicense.com to help you make that decision.

You can see a breakdown of what’s required, what’s permitted, and what’s forbidden for each license:

When you’ve made your choice, copy it to your clipboard with one click:

Have any suggestions? ChooseALicense.com itself is open source. Send us a Pull Request with your changes.

Licenses on GitHub.com

Now that we have all these licenses in one happy home, we want to help people choose their licenses on GitHub, too. When you create a new repository you’ll see a new license picker:

To get started, simply point your browser at choosealicense.com, or for more information, you can dive into the full documentation. Happy licensing!

Written by

Phil Haack

@Haacked