license

a command line tool to create LICENSE files.

It provides good defaults for name and year on license (customizable if needed), and it supports all license types listed on the GitHub Licenses API and a few more. The license templates used by this program were copied from the GitHub Licenses API, when available.

agpl-3.0      (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0)
apache-2.0    (Apache License 2.0)
bsd-2-clause  (BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License)
bsd-3-clause  (BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License)
cc0-1.0       (Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal)
epl-2.0       (Eclipse Public License 2.0)
free-art-1.3  (Free Art License 1.3)
gpl-2.0       (GNU General Public License v2.0)
gpl-3.0       (GNU General Public License v3.0)
lgpl-2.1      (GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1)
lgpl-3.0      (GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0)
mit           (MIT License)
mpl-2.0       (Mozilla Public License 2.0)
unlicense     (The Unlicense)
wtfpl         (Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License)

Install

Building from Source

With Go 1.16 or higher:

go install github.com/nishanths/license/v5@latest

Manual

In order to install the man pages you need Pandoc (available in (brew) for mack, and reliable linux package managers). For full install run:

git clone github.com/nishanths/license
cd license
make

Via the Arch User Repository (AUR)

This program is available via the AUR under the name nishanths-license-git. Using yay, you can install it like so:

WARNING: The authenticity of this method was last verified on 2021-07-04 by the maintainer(s) of the license project. Please verify before use.

yay -S nishanths-license-git

Usage

Print license

To print a license to stdout, run the license command followed by the license name:

$ license mit

Save to file

Use the -o flag to save the license to a file, or use your shell's redirection operator:

$ license -o LICENSE.txt mit
$ license mit > LICENSE.txt

Customize name and year

$ license -year 2013 -name "Alice L" isc

The current year is used if -year is omitted.

To determine the name on the license, the following are used in this order:

- command line flags: -name, -n
- environment variable: LICENSE_FULL_NAME
- gitconfig and hgconfig
- "os/user".Current()
- empty string

If you have your name set in $HOME/.gitconfig, you can almost always omit the -name flag.

Demo

Contributing

Pull requests for new features, bug fixes, and suggestions are welcome!

License

MIT