Choosealicense.com

Overview

ChooseALicense.com is a website that provides information about popular open-source licenses. The goal of the website is to help users make informed decisions about the licenses they choose for their projects. The website catalogues select open-source licenses and uses them to provide a license chooser, license detection, a licenses API, and to display license descriptions and metadata. The website aims to be accurate, non-judgmental, and understandable, and it collaborates with other licensing best practices and standards projects.

Features

• Accurate and non-judgmental information about open-source licenses
• License chooser and license detection
• Licenses API
• Display of license descriptions and metadata
• Additional information about licenses common to specific communities and situations

Installation

To run ChooseALicense.com on your local machine, you will need to have the following dependencies installed:

• cmake
• make

MacOS Installation

1. Install Homebrew by visiting https://brew.sh/ and following the installation instructions.
2. Use Homebrew to update your dependencies by running the following command in your terminal:

brew update

Linux/Ubuntu Installation

1. Use the apt-get tool to install the dependencies by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install cmake make

Running the Tool

Once you have the required dependencies installed, follow these steps to run ChooseALicense.com:

1. Open http://localhost:4000 in your favorite browser.
2. If you encounter any issues, refer to the official Jekyll documentation or the guide on running Jekyll as a non-superuser for more detailed installation instructions.

Adding a License

To add a license to ChooseALicense.com, refer to the CONTRIBUTING file for instructions.

License Metadata

Licenses are stored in the _licenses folder. Each license file has YAML front matter that describes the license’s properties. The body of the file contains the plain text of the license. The available metadata fields include:

• title: The full name of the license
• spdx-id: The short identifier of the license
• description: A human-readable description of the license
• how: Instructions on how to implement the license
• using: A map of notable projects that use the license
• permissions: A bulleted list of permission rules
• conditions: A bulleted list of condition rules
• limitations: A bulleted list of limitation rules

There are also optional fields including featured, hidden, and nickname.

Summary

ChooseALicense.com is a website that provides information about popular open-source licenses. It aims to help users make informed decisions by providing accurate and non-judgmental information. The website includes a license chooser, license detection, licenses API, and displays license descriptions and metadata. It collaborates with other licensing best practices and standards projects. The installation process is straightforward, and users can also contribute by adding new licenses.