Three steps:
- Find a repository without a
LICENSEorLICENSE.mdfile. - Determine the most appropriate license for the repository.
- Create a pull request adding a
LICENSEorLICENSE.mdfile.
Start by looking through GitHub repositories without a recognised license sorted by "most stars" or "most forks".
Check that GitHub does not show a recognised license at the top of the repository. See Adding a license for a picture of a recognised MIT license.
Check that the repository does not have a LICENSE or LICENSE.md file.
Maybe GitHub does not recognise the contents of the file.
Also look in the repository for a license file with a different file extension,
such as license.txt, or a directory with multiple licenses,
such as https://github.com/xl1/armiku .
If you find a repository like this, the following steps are not appropriate.
Instead, it may be appropriate to move the existing file.
If you like to explore this type of problem,
here
is a GitHub search which finds thousands of these repositories, and
here
is a GitHub search which shows repositories with a slightly different yet
similarly difficult problem to be solved.
However, it is recommended that you return to Step 1 and select a new repository
which doesnt have any license files.
Check the pull requests for the repository. Maybe someone has already proposed a license file. Do not send another pull request to add a license file.
Also avoid small repositories which are personal learning projects, or repositories without any code, or abandoned projects.
Avoid 'mirror' repositories, where pull requests are not wanted on GitHub. Many projects host their coding activities in another git system, and mirror the commits to GitHub. These projects may appear in search results, and should be skipped.
It is quite common for a repository to not have a LICENSE or LICENSE.md file, but still have already selected a license which is recorded in a different way.
If the repository has already chosen a license, it is not appropriate to suggest a different license. Therefore it is very important to try to find the existing license.
Maybe the repository has a README.md file which mentions the license.
The chosen license may exist in other files, such:
package.json
Check the issues in the repository. Maybe an issue already contains a discussion about licensing choices.
A good approach is to search the repository for the words license
and licence, and read each search result for hints of existing
licenses.
If there is no license mentioned anywhere in the repository, there are still other ways to find the most appropriate license.
Check the other repositories created by the main contributors. Maybe they consistently use a license, and simply forgot to add it to the repository that you have found in Step 1.
If you are confident that you have found the license that is implicitly chosen by the project team members, skip to Step 3.
Determining which license to propose for a respository is not easy.
That decision is usually best left to the existing team of contributors, who may have a strong preference that they have not disclosed publicly.
It is recommended that beginners go back to step 1 and find a different repository that already mentions a specific license.
The text for many licenses can be obtained from https://choosealicense.com/
- Copy it to the clipboard.
- Fork the repository
- Add a LICENSE file to the repository, committing the new file to a branch.
- Be aware that may licenses provide template values that must be substituted with the correct values
- Submit your branch to the main repository as a pull request.
A quick way to create a license file is to create a fork and then create a URL using the following template.
https://github.com/<your username>/<repository name>/community/license/new?branch=license&template=mit
Replace mit with the short license identifier that GitHub has allocated to the selected license.
Examples of this task being done by Indonesian University students can be found at this blog post.
The raw file for that blog post is at: https://github.com/BesutKode/BesutKode.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2016-11-01-31-october-elimination-results.md
A better link to repos without licenses could be this ;)
https://github.com/search?o=desc&s=stars&type=Repositories&utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=-license%3Aagpl-3.0+-license%3Aapache-2.0+-license%3Aartistic-2.0+-license%3Absd-2-clause+-license%3Absd-3-clause+-license%3Absd-3-clause-clear+-license%3Absl-1.0+-license%3Acc-by-4.0+-license%3Acc-by-sa-4.0+-license%3Acc0-1.0+-license%3Aecl-2.0+-license%3Aepl-1.0+-license%3Aeupl-1.1+-license%3Agpl-2.0+-license%3Agpl-3.0+-license%3Aisc+-license%3Algpl-2.1+-license%3Algpl-3.0+-license%3Alppl-1.3c+-license%3Amit+-license%3Ampl-2.0+-license%3Ams-pl+-license%3Ams-rl+-license%3Ancsa+-license%3Aofl-1.1+-license%3Aosl-3.0+-license%3Apostgresql+-license%3Aunlicense+-license%3Awtfpl+-license%3Azlib+-license%3Acc+-license%3Agpl+-license%3Algpl