Open Source LICENSE Generator

Choose a license, fill in your name and year, and get the file plus everything needed to apply it.

Official texts from choosealicense.com · not legal advice

Dual / multi-licensee.g. MIT OR Apache-2.0 (Rust's convention)

Popular

Permissive

Copyleft

Weak copyleft

Public domain

Content, fonts & data

Hardware

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LICENSEMIT

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MIT License in plain EnglishPopular

A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.

You can

Commercial use
Modification
Distribution
Private use

You must

License & copyright notice

You can't / no

No liability
No warranty

Create a text file (typically named LICENSE or LICENSE.txt) in the root of your source code and copy the text of the license into the file. Replace [year] with the current year and [fullname] with the name (or names) of the copyright holders.

Used by: Babel .NET Rails

Apply it to your project

Source file header (SPDX)

// SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 <copyright holder>
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

README badge

[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html)

README section

## License

This project is licensed under the MIT License (`MIT`) — see [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details.

package.json

"license": "MIT"

Cargo.toml

license = "MIT"

pyproject.toml (PEP 639)

license = "MIT"
license-files = ["LICEN[CS]E*"]

composer.json

"license": "MIT"

*.gemspec

spec.license = "MIT"

.csproj (NuGet)

<PackageLicenseExpression>MIT</PackageLicenseExpression>

pom.xml

<licenses>
  <license>
    <name>MIT</name>
    <url>https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html</url>
  </license>
</licenses>

pubspec / Helm / others

license: MIT

Copyright (c) 2026 Your Name

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Frequently Asked Questions

MIT for maximum reuse, Apache-2.0 if you want a patent grant, GPL-3.0 so derived work stays open, and AGPL-3.0 to cover web services. The wizard helps you decide.

Both are permissive. Apache 2.0 adds an explicit patent grant and requires stating changes; MIT is shorter.

A standard short name like MIT or GPL-3.0-or-later used in package manifests and file headers.

From choosealicense.com (maintained by GitHub), bundled with the tool so it works offline.

No. It helps you pick and apply a license; ask a lawyer for commercial or company decisions.

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