An open source license selector helps you choose the right license for your code based on your goals around copyleft, attribution, patent grants, and commercial use. Use this free quiz to pick from MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, AGPL, BSD, MPL, or the Unlicense - and copy a ready-to-paste LICENSE file.
Pick the single goal that matters most. We'll fine-tune from here.
Quick lookup for the major OSI-approved licenses covered by this quiz.
| License | Category | Patent grant | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIT | Permissive | No | Maximum adoption, minimum strings attached. Great for libraries, frameworks, and starter templates. |
| Apache 2.0 | Permissive | Yes | Permissive with explicit patent protection. Best when contributors or users hold patents. |
| BSD-3-Clause | Permissive | No | Like MIT, but with explicit non-endorsement. Common in academic and BSD-derived projects. |
| MPL-2.0 | Weak copyleft | Yes | File-level copyleft. Lets companies use MPL libraries in proprietary products as long as they share fixes to the library itself. |
| GPL-3.0 | Strong copyleft | Yes | Maximum copyleft. Forces every distributor to share their improvements under the same terms. |
| AGPL-3.0 | Strong copyleft | Yes | Strongest copyleft. Required if you want SaaS providers to share their improvements. |
| Unlicense | Public domain | No | True public domain dedication. Use when you want zero obligations on your users - not even attribution. |
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Open toolCommon questions about choosing and applying an open source license to your project.
MIT is shorter and simpler: do whatever you want as long as you keep the copyright notice. Apache 2.0 is also permissive but adds an explicit patent grant from contributors, requires you to state significant changes, and protects trademarks. For corporate-backed projects or anything that might touch patented techniques, Apache 2.0 is usually the safer choice.
You can relicense your own future contributions, but every existing contributor still owns the copyright on the code they wrote. To switch licenses you typically need explicit permission from every contributor, or to use a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) up front that grants you the right to relicense. Pick the license you want before accepting outside contributions.
Copyleft is a licensing rule that requires derivative works to be distributed under the same license. GPL is strong copyleft (the entire combined work must be GPL). MPL is weak copyleft (only the modified files must remain open source). Permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0 are not copyleft - users can take your code closed-source.
If your project implements anything that could be patented (algorithms, protocols, formats), an explicit patent grant from contributors prevents them from suing your users over those patents later. Apache 2.0, MPL 2.0, and GPL-3.0 all include patent grants. MIT and BSD do not. Most modern open source projects with corporate contributors prefer licenses with patent grants.
GitHub's choosealicense.com nudges most users toward MIT for general projects, Apache 2.0 for projects that need patent protection, and GPL-3.0 if you want a strong copyleft. As of recent statistics, MIT remains the single most popular license across public GitHub repositories.
The Unlicense is a public domain dedication, and its enforceability depends on jurisdiction. Some legal systems (notably some in Europe) don't allow authors to fully waive copyright. CC0 1.0 has a more robust legal fallback for those jurisdictions, so consider CC0 if you need maximum global compatibility for a true public domain release.
AGPL is GPL plus a network-use clause. With GPL, if you modify the code but only run it as an internal SaaS, you don't have to share the source. AGPL closes that loophole: any user who interacts with your modified version over a network is entitled to receive the source code. AGPL is common for open-core SaaS products.
Beyond licenses
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