Open Source License Generator
Pick a license, fill in your name, get a ready-to-commit LICENSE file — canonical text from GitHub's Licenses API
MIT License Copyright (c) [year] [fullname] 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, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
This isn't legal advice — if a license choice materially affects your business, talk to a lawyer. The text above is the unmodified, canonical license body sourced from GitHub's public Licenses API.
About this tool
The ToolNinja License Generator produces a ready-to-commit LICENSE file for seven of the most common open source licenses — MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD 3-Clause, ISC, Mozilla Public License 2.0, GNU GPL 3.0, and the Unlicense. Every license body is sourced verbatim from GitHub's public Licenses API, which mirrors the canonical SPDX reference text — nothing here is paraphrased or hand-typed, so what you copy is the real, legally-recognized license text. For licenses that need a copyright holder name and year (MIT, BSD, ISC, GPL), fill in the two fields on the right and they're substituted into the correct placeholders automatically. Each license includes a short, plain-English summary of what it actually permits and requires, to help you pick — but for anything where the choice has real business stakes, that's a conversation for a lawyer, not a tool.
When to use it
- →Adding a LICENSE file to a brand-new open source repository
- →Comparing permissive (MIT/Apache/BSD/ISC) vs. copyleft (GPL/MPL) terms at a glance
- →Generating correctly-filled-in copyright text without hunting down the exact placeholder format
- →Switching a project's license and needing the new file's exact canonical wording
Tips
- ◆MIT, BSD, ISC, and GPL need your name and year — Apache, MPL, and the Unlicense don't require any fields to be filled in.
- ◆The downloaded file is named exactly LICENSE with no extension, the GitHub convention that gets it recognized automatically on a repo's main page.
- ◆If you're not sure which to pick: MIT is the simplest permissive default most projects use; GPL is the right call if you want derivative works to stay open source too.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the license text come from?
Directly from GitHub's Licenses API (api.github.com/licenses), which serves the canonical SPDX reference text for each license — the same source GitHub itself uses to detect and display a repository's license.
Can I change my license after I've already published code under another one?
Generally only with the agreement of every contributor who holds copyright in the existing code, since they licensed their contributions under the original terms. For a solo project it's simpler, but for anything with outside contributors, treat a license change as something to actually get agreement on.
Is this legal advice?
No. This tool reproduces official license text accurately, but it doesn't tell you which license is right for your specific situation. If the choice has real stakes for your business, talk to a lawyer.