The Open Source API contains metadata regarding OSI Approved Licenses, and crosswalks that help with using and integrating this information with external sources. You can think of this API as a sort of "hub" or "connector" to help ensure end users can simply build applications that are license-aware.
Get a list of all known licenses.
Find all licenses by a keyword (defined below).
Get a license by its OSI ID
Get a license by an identifier (such as SPDX/Apache-2.0 or DEP5/Expat)
| attribute | description |
|---|---|
id |
OSI Identifier (such as MPL-2.0) |
name |
Name of the License (such as General Public License) |
superseded_by |
OSI Identifier of the licenses that supersedes this license (such as EPL-1.0) |
keywords |
List of text keywords that describe this license. (see Keywords below) |
identifiers |
List of identifier objects for this license (see Identifier below) |
links |
List of link objects for this license (see Link below) |
other_names |
List of other_name objects for this license (see Other Name) |
text |
List of text objects for this license (see Text below) |
| keyword | description |
|---|---|
osi-approved |
This license has been OSI Approved. |
redundant |
This license is redundant with a more widely used license. |
permissive |
|
copyleft |
This license requires derived works remain Open Source. |
obsolete |
This license is considered obsolete by its authors. |
miscellaneous |
|
popular |
This license is widely used. |
discouraged |
This license's use is actively discouraged. |
non-reusable |
This license isn't generally usable outside of the authoring organization. |
special-purpose |
This license suits a very special purpose. |
retired |
This license has been retired. |
| attribute | description |
|---|---|
identifier |
A text identifier issued for the scheme below. |
scheme |
An identifier namespace (such as SPDX or DEP5) |
| attribute | description |
|---|---|
note |
Description of the link |
url |
URL of the link |
| attribute | description |
|---|---|
name |
Other name this license is known by |
note |
Note regarding the use of this name |
| attribute | description |
|---|---|
media_type |
Type of content contained at the URL (sometimes called content type or MIME) |
title |
Title of the text link |
url |
URL to the text |
- python-opensource (@paultag)
- ruby-opensourceapi (@paultag)
- haskell-opensource (@clinty)
- github.com/opensourceorg/api/client (@paultag)
- rust-opensource (@eriol)
- ocaml-opensource (@mehdid)
Don't see what you need? Send a pull request! The data provided in the API is stored in Git, currently hosted on the opensourceorg/licenses repo. Feel free to file bugs, help work on improvements, and send in pull requests!
Data provided by this API is licensed CC0.