Choosing the right open source license can be confusing and overwhelming. This tool simplifies the decision by asking targeted questions about your project's goals and values.
🤖 AI-Assisted Development: This project was created with the help of AI tools, but solves real-world problems in open source license selection and developer decision-making.
Live at license.wtf.
- Visit the Site: Go to license.wtf
- Answer Questions:
- Toggle questions: Click "Yes", "No", or "Maybe" buttons
- Slider questions: Drag the slider to set your preference (1-10 scale)
- Get Recommendations: Click "Get My License Recommendation!" when all questions are answered
- Review Results: See your top 3 license recommendations with explanations
- Try Again: Click "Try Again" to restart the quiz
The quiz asks about:
- Commercial Use 💸 - Can people use your code in commercial projects?
- Share Changes ♻️ - Should people share their changes back?
- Closed Source 🔒 - Is it okay if someone turns your code into a closed-source product?
- SaaS Open Source 🌐 - If someone runs your code on a web app, should they open source it too?
- Patent Protection 🛡️ - Do you want protection for your ideas (patents)?
- License Simplicity 📜 - How simple should your license be?
- Copyleft Strength ♻️ - How strongly do you want others to keep their code open?
- License Compatibility 🤝 - How compatible should your license be with other codebases?
The application recommends from these popular open source licenses:
- MIT - Simple and permissive
- Apache 2.0 - Like MIT with better patent protection
- GPL-3.0 - Strong copyleft license
- BSD-3-Clause - Very similar to MIT
- LGPL-2.1 - Allows linking with proprietary code
- AGPL-3.0 - GPL with network use coverage
- MPL-2.0 - File-level copyleft
- ISC - Simplified BSD license
- CC0 - Public domain dedication
- Unlicense - Public domain with patent grant
This project was inspired by:
- dont.build - A collection of simple questions that help you in the decision of should I build a thing or not.
- choosealicense.com - GitHub's official license chooser that helps developers select appropriate open source licenses