licensegen

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licensegen is a small utility for both linux and windows that generates a LICENSE file for new open source projects. It comes with templates for several of the most popular OSS licenses.

licensegen generates both a LICENSE file containing the text of the selected OSS license and a file containing a comment header for source files.

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Compilation/Installation

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• $ git clone https://github.com/patinthehat/licensegen.git
• $ cd licensegen
• $ make
• Configuration
• Usage / Usage Examples

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Configuration

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After cloning the repository, you must create a configuration file for licensegen to read settings from, i.e. you name or email address.

Here is a default licensegen.json:

{ 
   "Author": {
    "FirstName":"firstname",
    "LastName":"lastname",
    "EmailAddress":"user@example.com",
    "Website":"http://www.example.com"
   },

  -- snip --

Modify the settings to match your personal details. You may leave Email Address and/or Website empty and it will not appear in the generated output.

Adding a new license

To make a new license template available, you must:

• Create a NAME.license file in the licenses/ directory, containing the contents of the license with variables such as Year replaced with the appropriate go template variable. See existing license templates for available template variables.
• Create a NAME.header file in the licenses/ directory, also with the appropriate template variables.
• Add a new entry to licensegen.json, under "Licenses":

{ "Name": "NAME", "LicenseFile":"licenses/NAME.license", "HeaderFile":"licenses/NAME.header" }

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Usage

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Using licensegen is fairly simple. After compiling, run $ licensegen --list to list which license templates are available. Next, run $ licensegen --license [license-name].

This will generate a LICENSE file and a LICENSE_FILE_HEADER file into the current directory.

The LICENSE file contains the selected license with name, email, website, copyright year, etc. completed according to your licensegen.json configuration.

The LICENSE_FILE_HEADER file contains a commented header to insert at the top of each file in your project.

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Usage Examples

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• $ licensegen --list
• $ licensegen --license MIT
• $ licensegen MIT
• $ licensegen Apache-2.0

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Available Licenses

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• Apache 2.0
• GPL 2.0
• GPL 3.0
• MIT
• MPL 2.0
• None (simple copyright)

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@todo

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• complete the README
• add README entry to explain how to add new license templates
• add more license templates
• add interactive mode when started with -i flag

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Licensing

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licensegen is open source software, available under the MIT license.