License Chooser
Choose and generate the right open source license for your project
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2026 [Copyright Holder]
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.About This Tool
An open-source license is the legal terms under which others may use, modify, and redistribute your code. Common choices form a spectrum: MIT and BSD are permissive (do anything, keep the notice); Apache 2.0 adds patent grants; GPL and AGPL are copyleft, requiring derivative works to share their source.
This tool asks a few questions about your goals — patent protection, copyleft preference, network use — and recommends a matching license, with the full text ready to drop into LICENSE.
The Open Source Initiative maintains a list of approved licenses meeting the Open Source Definition. The Free Software Foundation maintains a parallel list of "free" licenses with stricter philosophical criteria — most OSI-approved licenses also qualify as free. Permissive licenses (MIT, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, ISC, Apache 2.0) impose few obligations beyond preserving the copyright notice. Weak copyleft (LGPL, MPL) requires source disclosure for the licensed components but allows linking with proprietary code. Strong copyleft (GPL v2, GPL v3) extends to the whole derivative work. Network copyleft (AGPL v3) closes the SaaS loophole — running the software as a service triggers source-disclosure obligations.
A worked example: a small JavaScript utility library with no patentable algorithms, intended for maximum adoption. Recommendation: MIT. The license fits in a paragraph, imposes only the notice-preservation requirement, and is recognized by every package registry, license scanner, and corporate legal team. Same library but with a novel algorithm you've patented: Apache 2.0. The patent grant clause prevents downstream users from suing each other over patent infringement and explicitly licenses your patent claims to anyone using the code. A consumer-facing application where you want forks to remain open: GPL v3. The license forces redistribution of derivatives under the same terms, preventing closed-source forks.
Limitations: license selection is a legal decision the tool cannot make for you. The recommendation is based on common matching of intent to license terms; it doesn't substitute for legal advice on your specific situation. License compatibility — whether you can combine code under different licenses — is a separate question the tool doesn't resolve. The GPL family is famously incompatible with several other licenses (Apache 2.0 is GPL v3 compatible but not v2). For commercial products that link against open-source dependencies, licensing implications cascade through the dependency tree, and that's where projects most often get into trouble.
The about text and FAQ on this page were drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by a member of the Coherence Daddy team before publishing. See our Content Policy for editorial standards.