mirror of
https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com
synced 2024-12-22 21:00:10 +01:00
80 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
# Choose a License Web Site [](https://travis-ci.org/github/choosealicense.com)
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Like a Choose Your Own Adventure site, but only much less interesting.
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# Intro
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A lot of repositories on GitHub.com don't have a license. GitHub provides
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a license chooser, but if you don't know anything about licenses, how are you
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supposed to make an informed decision?
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[ChooseALicense.com](http://www.choosealicense.com "Choose A Licence website") is designed to help people make an informed decision about
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licenses.
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# Immediate Goals
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* Non-partisan. Our goal is to help you find a license that meets *your* goals.
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* Well designed, but that goes without saying.
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* The homepage should have just enough to help 99% of folks make a decision.
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* For the 1%, the site will contain a list of licenses common to specific
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communities and situations.
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* Not comprehensive. Seems like an odd goal, but there are a bajillion
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licenses out there. We're going to have to filter that down to a
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small list of those that matter.
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# Run It On Your Machine
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```bash
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git clone https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com.git
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cd choosealicense.com
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script/bootstrap
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script/server
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```
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Open `http://localhost:4000` in your favorite browser.
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# Adding a license
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The text of the license should be wrapped to a 78 character width.
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Licenses sit in the `/licenses` folder. Each license has YAML front matter
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describing the license's properties. The body of the file should be the text
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of the license in plain text. The available metadata fields are:
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* `title` - The name of the license
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* `layout` - This should be `license`
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* `permalink` - The absolute URL to the license, beginning with `/licenses/`
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* `source` - URL to the license source text
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* `note` - The note field in the sidebar (optional)
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* `how` - How to use the license, also in the sidebar
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* `required`, `permitted`, `forbidden` - bulleted list of rules applicable to the license (see below)
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* `filename` - The filename to be created on GitHub.com when a repository is initialized with this license.
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The licenses on choosealicense.com are regularly imported to GitHub.com to be
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used as the list of licenses available when creating a repository. When we
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create a repository, we will replace certain strings in the license with
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variables from the repository. These can be used to create accurate copyright
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notices. The available variables are:
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* `[fullname]` - The full name or username of the repository owner
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* `[login]` - The repository owner's username
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* `[email]` - The repository owner's primary email address
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* `[project]` - The repository name
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* `[description]` - The description of the repository
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* `[year]` - The current year
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# Rules
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Rules (the license's properties) are stored as a bulleted list within the
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licenses YAML front matter. A full list of rules can be found in `_data/rules.yml`.
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Each rule has a name e.g., `include-copyright`, a human-readable label, e.g.,
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`Copyright inclusion`, and a description `Include the original copyright with the code`.
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To add a new rule, simply add it to `_data/rules.yml` and reference it in the
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appropriate license.
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# License
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The content of this project itself is licensed under the
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[Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en_US),
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and the underlying source code used to format and display that content
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is licensed under the [MIT license](http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php).
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