licgen - Offline CLI Licence Template generation

licgen is a command-line tool that brings the functionality of choosealicense.com to your terminal, completely offline. It helps you quickly generate license files for your projects without having to search for them online.

Features

• Offline License Help: View permissions, conditions, and limitations for popular licenses in a clean table format.
• Dynamic Template System: Adding new licenses is as easy as creating a .template text file.
• Smart Defaults: Automatically writes to LICENSE.txt, LICENSE.md, or LICENSE.json based on the format.
• Interactive Mode: Prompts for required fields like Name and Year if not provided.
• Full CLI Support: Supports arguments for non-interactive use and piping.

Installation

From Source

git clone https://github.com/teja/licgen.git
cd licgen
make
sudo make install

Usage

List Available Licenses

licgen list

View License Details

See permissions, conditions, and limitations (like choosealicense.com):

licgen mit --help

Generate a License

By default, licgen writes to a file in the current directory:

licgen mit                     # Interactive mode, writes to LICENSE.txt
licgen mit --name "John Doe"   # Non-interactive, writes to LICENSE.txt

Output Formats

• Text (Default): Writes to LICENSE.txt
• Markdown: Use -m or --markdown. Writes to LICENSE.md.
• JSON: Use -j or --json. Writes to LICENSE.json.

licgen mit --markdown    # Creates LICENSE.md
licgen mit --json        # Creates LICENSE.json

Print to Terminal

If you want the output printed to the terminal instead of a file (e.g., for piping):

licgen mit --stdout      # Prints to terminal
licgen mit -s            # Short version

Advanced Generation

licgen mit --name "Jane Doe" --year 2026 --output MY_LICENSE
# Using short flags:
licgen mit -n "Jane Doe" -y 2026 -o MY_LICENSE

Adding New Licenses

Adding a new license is incredibly simple. Just create a .template file in the templates/ directory:

ID: mylic
Name: My Custom License
SPDX: MY-LIC
Category: permissive
Description: A very cool license.

Permissions:
- Commercial use
- Private use

Conditions:
- License notice

---
Copyright (c) {{year}} {{name}}
... license text here ...

Supported Licenses

The tool currently supports many popular licenses including:

• Permissive: MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD 2/3-Clause, ISC, Zlib, Boost
• Copyleft: GPL v3.0 (and more in progress)
• Public Domain: Unlicense, CC0, WTFPL

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.