---
id: "software_license"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["software"]
langs: ["en"]
quality: 70
url: "http://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/software_license"
---

# Software license by field name (`software_license`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Name or identifier of the license of a software package, usually written as a short SPDX license identifier such as MIT or Apache-2.0. The SPDX License List, maintained by the Linux Foundation's SPDX project, assigns these identifiers to common open source licenses. Package metadata, software bills of materials and code hosting sites use them. Values are recognised by field name and by membership in the SPDX list, not by a regular expression.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Software development (software)
- Countries: global
- Languages: English (en)
- Classification: identifier

## Examples

- `MIT` — MIT License
- `Apache-2.0` — Apache License 2.0
- `GPL-3.0-or-later` — GNU General Public License v3.0 or later

## Mappings

- wikidata: `P2479`

## Metacrafter rules

2 rules: 1 match the field name, 1 match values.

- `licensebyknown` (field, `common/software.yaml`)
- `spdxlicensebyvalue` (data, `common/software.yaml`)

## Supported by tools

- `metacrafter`

## Sources

- doc: <https://spdx.org/licenses/>
- wikidata: <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P2479>

## Quality

Score 70/100. Missing: regexp, negative example, translation.

JSON: <http://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/software_license.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/any/software/software_license.yaml>