LicenseDB overview

LicenseDB is likely the largest collection of software licenses available on earth and may be beyond.

LicenseDB is a free and open database of mostly all the software licenses, in particular all the open source software licenses, with over 2000 curated licenses texts and their metadata.

LicenseDB is built from the ScanCode Toolkit license dataset. ScanCode Toolkit is a leading open source code scanner and license detection engine.

LicenseDB is an essential reference license resource for license compliance and SBOMs. LicenseDB includes all the SPDX and OSI licenses together with an extended curated collection of other licenses and license metadata. These licenses are carefully reviewed and curated and continusouly updated by an open community of contributors.

LicenseDB is available as a web site, an JSON or YAML API and a git repository making it easy to reuse and integrate in tools that need a database of reference software licenses.


LicenseDB web

The web site is published at: https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/. You can search the licenses by name, key and other attributes.


LicenseDB API

The API index is available at these endpoints:

The index contains a list of the license keys with key metadata and links to the license details and texts using this license key as an identifier:


LicenseDB Git repositories

This git repository contains the full history of the generated HTML and JSON API documents https://github.com/nexB/scancode-licensedb

This git repository contains the original and editable source files: https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit


Support


LicenseDB's own license

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0 AND Apache-2.0

https://github.com/nexB/scancode-licensedb Copyright (c) nexB Inc. and others. ScanCode is a trademark of nexB Inc.

ScanCode LicenseDB data is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0). Some licenses, such as the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, are subject to other licenses. See the corresponding license text for the specific license conditions.

ScanCode LicenseDB software is licensed under the Apache License version 2.0. You may not use this software except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at: http://apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

ScanCode LicenseDB is generated with ScanCode Toolkit. The database and its contents are provided on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. No content from ScanCode LicenseDB should be considered or used as legal advice. Consult an attorney for any legal advice.

Visit https://github.com/nexB/scancode-licensedb for support.

ScanCode Toolkit is a free Software Composition Analysis tool from nexB Inc. and others. Visit https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit for support and download.


Field Definitions

key
The unique identifier for the license in the ScanCode LicenseDB as assigned by scancode-toolkit. Note that this identifier is permanent and never changes and never goes away once published: no license key is ever deleted. Instead a license can be marked as deprecated.
short_name
A short descriptive name (title) for the license in the ScanCode LicenseDB as assigned by scancode-toolkit.
name
A long name for the license in the ScanCode LicenseDB as assigned by scancode-toolkit.
is_deprecated
When this is “yes”, the license is no longer used. For deprecated licenses, the notes may contain commentaries and the license key that this license may be replaced by when relevant.
spdx_license_key
The SPDX Short Identifier for the license if it exists in the SPDX license list at https://spdx.org/licenses/. Otherwise this is an SPDX license reference in the form of LicenseRef-scancode-<license key>.
other_spdx_license_keys
Alternative (or older, deprecated or obsolete) SPDX Short Identifiers or LicenseRef for the license.
text_urls
URLs to the standard text of the license.
notes
Notes and comments about the license.
category
A license category code, assigned by scancode-toolkit, that provides a major grouping for licenses, generally describing the relationship between the licensor and the licensee. These license categories are not legally precise, and are only intended to support Software Composition Analysis and usage policy implementations.
owner
An owner is an entity that is the original author or custodian of a software license, and which may be responsible for the text of the license. This is mandatory and should be set to "Unspecified" if it cannot be determined.
homepage_url
The homepage URL where the license is described.
other_urls
Other URLs that identify or are related to this license, such as URLs to this license in different open-source projects. Obsolete links may be kept here, as they may be useful for historical analysis purposes.
osi_license_key
The identifier assigned by the OSI to a license for OSI-approved licenses.
osi_url
A URL on the OSI website http://opensource.org for OSI-approved licenses.
faq_url
A URL that provides answers to frequently asked questions about the license.
is_exception
When this is "yes", indicates that this license is actually an exception applied to another license in order to modify specific conditions of that other license.
standard_notice
The standard text to provide in source or documentation that identifies the license or exception that applies to the software.
These fields are used only to support certain technical aspects of code scanning:
ignorable_urls
URLs found in the license text but that can be ignored when scanning for URLs.
ignorable_emails
Email addresses found in the license text but that can be ignored when scanning for emails.
ignorable_copyrights
Copyright statements found in the license text but that can be ignored when scanning for copyright.
ignorable_holders
Copyright holders found in the license text but that can be ignored when scanning for copyright holders.
ignorable_authors
Author names found in the license text but that can be ignored when scanning for authors.
minimum_coverage
Minimum percentage of the license text words that need to be matched to consider a license detection as a valid match.

License Categories

CLA
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) describes and defines the contribution acceptance rules for the ongoing development and enhancement of a software project. The CLA may specify how the resulting software contribution itself will be licensed.
Commercial
Third-party proprietary software offered under a direct commercial license between supplier and customer. Further fact-finding by Product Teams will be necessary to determine the code's license status and function, if any.
Copyleft
Open source software with a "copyleft" license that offers irrevocable permission to the public to copy and redistribute the work in the same or modified form, but with the conditions that all such redistributions make the work available in a form that facilitates further modification and use the same license terms. A copyleft license can require code interacting with copyleft-licensed code to be licensed the same way.
Copyleft Limited
A license that requires you to redistribute source code, including your changes, and also to provide attribution for the software authors. Your obligation to redistribute source code, including proprietary code linked with code under this license, is limited according to license-specific rules.
Free Restricted
A Permissive-style license, that contains restrictions regarding the usage of the software (for example, where the software is not intended for use in nuclear power plants) or the redistribution of the software (for example, where commercial redistribution of the software is not allowed without express permission). The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that a license with this kind of restriction is not really open source, although the OSI point of view is not that strict.
Patent License
A license that applies to patents rather than specific software. May be used in conjunction with other software license(s) that apply to a software component.
Permissive
Open Source software that is made available under "non-copyleft" licenses. These generally require attribution of the included open source and may include other obligations.
Proprietary Free
Proprietary Free software that may not require a commercial license but may have specific terms and conditions which Product Teams are obligated to follow. Some of these terms and conditions are provided with or in the code or in clickable downloaded licenses. Examples are the Sun Binary Code License Agreement or a freely offered BSP.
Public Domain
Open source software that is made available without explicit obligations, but which has a license notice that must be kept with the code per organization policy. The match may be to software, code examples on a website, published public domain specifications or another type of publication.
Source-available
Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called open-source.
Unstated License
Third-party software that has a copyright notice, but no stated license. Common examples include code snippets from publications and websites (such as those from O'Reilly Media). The absence of a license poses a risk that the copyright owner may assert license obligations at some future time. Product Teams may need to contact the copyright owner to determine the license obligations, if any.