LicenseRec: Knowledge based Open Source License Recommendation for OSS Projects

Open Source license is a prerequisite for open source software, which regulates the use, modification, redistribution, and attribution of the software. Open source license is crucial to the community development and commercial interests of an OSS project, yet choosing a proper license from hundreds of licenses remains challenging. Tools assisting developers to understand the terms and pick the right license have been emerging, while inferring license compatibility on the dependency tree and satisfying the complex needs of developers are beyond the capability of most of them. Thus we propose LicenseRec, an open source license recommendation tool that helps to bridge the gap. LicenseRec performs fine-grained license compatibility checks on OSS projects' code and dependencies, and assists developers to choose the optimal license through an interactive wizard with guidelines of three aspects: personal open source style, business pattern, and community development. The usefulness of Li-censeRec is confirmed by the consistent positive feedback from 10 software developers with academic and industrial backgrounds. Our tool is accessible at https://licenserec.com and a video showcasing the tool is available at https://video.licenserec.com.