LicenseCheck

NOTICE: I am not a lawyer (IANAL)

Any output provided by this software is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. I am not a lawyer and there is no guarantee that the information provided here is complete or correct. Any reliance on the information provided by this software is at your own risk.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL, project license (MIT)

Output the licences used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license

Examples from the command-line
Help
Configuration Example
Documentation
Install With PIP
Language information
- Built for
Install Python on Windows
- Chocolatey
- Windows - Python.org
Install Python on Linux
- Apt
- Dnf
Install Python on MacOS
- Homebrew
- MacOS - Python.org
How to run
- Windows
- Linux/ MacOS
Building
Testing
Download Project
- Clone
  - Using The Command Line
  - Using GitHub Desktop
- Download Zip File
Community Files
- Licence
- Changelog
- Code of Conduct
- Contributing
- Security
- Support
- Rationale

Examples from the command-line

See below for the output if you run licensecheck in this directory. More examples are available here

Using pyproject.toml (default if not piping input)

>> licensecheck

               Info
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Item            ┃ Value        ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ program         │ licensecheck │
│ version         │ 2025         │
│ license         │ MIT LICENSE  │
│ project_license │ MIT LICENSE  │
└─────────────────┴──────────────┘

                              List Of Packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package             ┃ License(s)                            ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✔          │ appdirs             │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ attrs               │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ boolean-py          │ BSD-2-CLAUSE                          │
│ ✔          │ cattrs              │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ certifi             │ MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE 2.0 _MPL 2.0_  │
│ ✔          │ charset-normalizer  │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ colorama            │ BSD LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ fhconfparser        │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ idna                │ BSD LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ license-expression  │ APACHE-2.0                            │
│ ✔          │ loguru              │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ markdown            │ BSD LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ markdown-it-py      │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ mdurl               │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ packaging           │ APACHE SOFTWARE LICENSE;; BSD LICENSE │
│ ✔          │ platformdirs        │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ pygments            │ BSD LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ requests            │ APACHE SOFTWARE LICENSE               │
│ ✔          │ requests-cache      │ BSD LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ requirements-parser │ APACHE SOFTWARE LICENSE               │
│ ✔          │ rich                │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ setuptools          │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ six                 │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ tomli               │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ types-setuptools    │ APACHE SOFTWARE LICENSE               │
│ ✔          │ url-normalize       │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ urllib3             │ MIT LICENSE                           │
│ ✔          │ uv                  │ APACHE SOFTWARE LICENSE;; MIT LICENSE │
│ ✔          │ win32-setctime      │ MIT LICENSE                           │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘

Use csv format

>>> licensecheck  --only-licenses mit apache --show-only-failing -f csv
name,version,size,homePage,author,license,licenseCompat,errorCode,namever
Markdown,3.7,361400,UNKNOWN,"Manfred Stienstra, Yuri Takhteyev",BSD LICENSE,False,0,Markdown-3.7
Pygments,2.19.1,4508396,UNKNOWN,UNKNOWN,BSD LICENSE,False,0,Pygments-2.19.1
boolean.py,4.0,109354,https://github.com/bastikr/boolean.py,Sebastian Kraemer,BSD-2-CLAUSE,False,0,boolean.py-4.0
certifi,2025.1.31,305559,https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi,Kenneth Reitz,MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE 2.0 _MPL 2.0_,False,0,certifi-2025.1.31
colorama,0.4.6,76299,UNKNOWN,UNKNOWN,BSD LICENSE,False,0,colorama-0.4.6
idna,3.10,349141,UNKNOWN,UNKNOWN,BSD LICENSE,False,0,idna-3.10
requests-cache,1.2.1,174099,https://github.com/requests-cache/requests-cache,Roman Haritonov,BSD LICENSE,False,0,requests-cache-1.2.1

Groups

uv run licensecheck  --only-licenses mit apache --show-only-failing -g dev

...

                            List Of Packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package           ┃ License(s)                           ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✖          │ authlib           │ BSD LICENSE                          │
│ ✖          │ boolean-py        │ BSD-2-CLAUSE                         │
│ ✖          │ certifi           │ MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE 2.0 _MPL 2.0_ │
│ ✖          │ click             │ BSD LICENSE                          │
│ ✖          │ colorama          │ BSD LICENSE                          │
│ ✖          │ filelock          │ THE UNLICENSE _UNLICENSE_            │
│ ✖          │ idna              │ BSD LICENSE                          │
│ ✖          │ jinja2            │ BSD LICENSE                          │
│ ✖          │ joblib            │ BSD LICENSE                          │
...

Help

usage: licensecheck [-h] [--license LICENSE] [--format FORMAT] [--requirements-paths REQUIREMENTS_PATHS [REQUIREMENTS_PATHS ...]]
                    [--groups GROUPS [GROUPS ...]] [--extras EXTRAS [EXTRAS ...]] [--file FILE]
                    [--ignore-packages IGNORE_PACKAGES [IGNORE_PACKAGES ...]] [--fail-packages FAIL_PACKAGES [FAIL_PACKAGES ...]]
                    [--ignore-licenses IGNORE_LICENSES [IGNORE_LICENSES ...]] [--fail-licenses FAIL_LICENSES [FAIL_LICENSES ...]]
                    [--only-licenses ONLY_LICENSES [ONLY_LICENSES ...]]
                    [--skip-dependencies SKIP_DEPENDENCIES [SKIP_DEPENDENCIES ...]]
                    [--hide-output-parameters HIDE_OUTPUT_PARAMETERS [HIDE_OUTPUT_PARAMETERS ...]] [--show-only-failing]
                    [--pypi-api PYPI_API] [--zero]

Output the licenses used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --license LICENSE, -l LICENSE
                        Specify the project license explicitly, rather than rely on licensecheck interpreting this from pyproject.toml
  --format FORMAT, -f FORMAT
                        Output format. one of: json, markdown, html, csv, ansi, simple. default=simple
  --requirements-paths REQUIREMENTS_PATHS [REQUIREMENTS_PATHS ...], -r REQUIREMENTS_PATHS [REQUIREMENTS_PATHS ...]
                        Filenames to read from (omit for stdin if piping, else pyproject.toml)
  --groups GROUPS [GROUPS ...], -g GROUPS [GROUPS ...]
                        Select groups from supported files
  --extras EXTRAS [EXTRAS ...], -e EXTRAS [EXTRAS ...]
                        Select extras from supported files
  --file FILE, -o FILE  Filename to write output to (omit this for stdout)
  --ignore-packages IGNORE_PACKAGES [IGNORE_PACKAGES ...]
                        List of packages/dependencies to ignore (compat=True), globs are supported
  --fail-packages FAIL_PACKAGES [FAIL_PACKAGES ...]
                        List of packages/dependencies to fail (compat=False), globs are supported
  --ignore-licenses IGNORE_LICENSES [IGNORE_LICENSES ...]
                        List of licenses to ignore (skipped, compat may still be False)
  --fail-licenses FAIL_LICENSES [FAIL_LICENSES ...]
                        List of licenses to fail (compat=False)
  --only-licenses ONLY_LICENSES [ONLY_LICENSES ...]
                        List of allowed licenses (packages/dependencies with any other license will fail)
  --skip-dependencies SKIP_DEPENDENCIES [SKIP_DEPENDENCIES ...]
                        List of packages/dependencies to skip (this sets the 'compatability' to True)
  --hide-output-parameters HIDE_OUTPUT_PARAMETERS [HIDE_OUTPUT_PARAMETERS ...]
                        List of parameters to hide from the produced output
  --show-only-failing   Only output a list of incompatible/ failing packages from this lib
  --pypi-api PYPI_API   Specify a custom pypi api endpoint, for example if using a custom pypi server
  --zero, -0            Return non zero exit code if an incompatible license is found, ideal for CI/CD

More information on using licensecheck from the command line is available here

You can also import this into your own project and use any of the functions in the DOCS

Configuration Example

Configuration files are parsed in the following order: pyproject.toml, setup.cfg, licensecheck.toml, licensecheck.json, licensecheck.ini, ~/licensecheck.toml, ~/licensecheck.json, ~/licensecheck.ini

⚠ All config files are parsed, however configuration defined in previous files takes precedent

Add optional path to requirements.txt as outlined in #9 (comment) for example: licensecheck --using requirements:c:/path/to/reqs.txt;path/to/other/reqs.txt

Example 1: pyproject.toml

The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json

[tool.licensecheck]
using = "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt"
format = "json"

Example 2: licensecheck.json

The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json

{
	"tool": {
		"licensecheck": {
			"using": "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt",
			"format": "json"
		}
	}
}

Example 3: licensecheck.ini

The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json

[licensecheck]
using = "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt"
format = "json"

Documentation

A high-level overview of how the documentation is organized organized will help you know where to look for certain things:

The Technical Reference documents APIs and other aspects of the machinery. This documentation describes how to use the classes and functions at a lower level and assume that you have a good high-level understanding of the software.

Install With PIP

pip install licensecheck

Head to https://pypi.org/project/licensecheck/ for more info

Language information

Built for

This program has been written for Python versions 3.8 - 3.11 and has been tested with both 3.8 and 3.11

Install Python on Windows

Chocolatey

choco install python

Windows - Python.org

To install Python, go to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/ and download the latest version.

Install Python on Linux

Apt

sudo apt install python3.x

Dnf

sudo dnf install python3.x

Install Python on MacOS

Homebrew

brew install python@3.x

MacOS - Python.org

To install Python, go to https://www.python.org/downloads/macos/ and download the latest version.

How to run

Windows

Module py -3.x -m [module] or [module] (if module installs a script)
File py -3.x [file] or ./[file]

Linux/ MacOS

Module python3.x -m [module] or [module] (if module installs a script)
File python3.x [file] or ./[file]

Building

This project uses https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/FHMake to automate most of the building. This command generates the documentation, updates the requirements.txt and builds the library artefacts

Note the functionality provided by fhmake can be approximated by the following

handsdown  --cleanup -o documentation/reference
poetry export -f requirements.txt --output requirements.txt
poetry export -f requirements.txt --with dev --output requirements_optional.txt
poetry build

fhmake audit can be run to perform additional checks

Testing

For testing with the version of python used by poetry use

poetry run pytest

Alternatively use tox to run tests over python 3.8 - 3.11

tox

Download Project

Clone

Using The Command Line

Press the Clone or download button in the top right
Copy the URL (link)
Open the command line and change directory to where you wish to clone to

Type 'git clone' followed by URL in step 2

git clone https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/LicenseCheck

More information can be found at https://help.github.com/en/articles/cloning-a-repository

Using GitHub Desktop

Press the Clone or download button in the top right
Click open in desktop
Choose the path for where you want and click Clone

More information can be found at https://help.github.com/en/desktop/contributing-to-projects/cloning-a-repository-from-github-to-github-desktop

Download Zip File

Download this GitHub repository
Extract the zip archive
Copy/ move to the desired location

Community Files

Licence

MIT License Copyright (c) FredHappyface (See the LICENSE for more information.)

Changelog

See the Changelog for more information.

Code of Conduct

Online communities include people from many backgrounds. The Project contributors are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all. Please see the Code of Conduct for more information.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, please see the Contributing Guidelines for more information.

Security

Thank you for improving the security of the project, please see the Security Policy for more information.

Support

Thank you for using this project, I hope it is of use to you. Please be aware that those involved with the project often do so for fun along with other commitments (such as work, family, etc). Please see the Support Policy for more information.

Rationale

The rationale acts as a guide to various processes regarding projects such as the versioning scheme and the programming styles used. Please see the Rationale for more information.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 173 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
documentation		documentation
licensecheck		licensecheck
readme-assets/icons		readme-assets/icons
tests		tests
.gitignore		.gitignore
.pre-commit-config.yaml		.pre-commit-config.yaml
.pre-commit-hooks.yaml		.pre-commit-hooks.yaml
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
LICENSE.md		LICENSE.md
README.md		README.md
pyproject.toml		pyproject.toml
requirements.txt		requirements.txt

License

FHPythonUtils/LicenseCheck

Folders and files

Latest commit

History

Repository files navigation

LicenseCheck

Table of Contents

Examples from the command-line

Using pyproject.toml (default if not piping input)

Use csv format

Groups

Help

Configuration Example

Example 1: pyproject.toml

Example 2: licensecheck.json

Example 3: licensecheck.ini

Documentation

Install With PIP

Language information

Built for

Install Python on Windows

Chocolatey

Windows - Python.org

Install Python on Linux

Apt

Dnf

Install Python on MacOS

Homebrew

MacOS - Python.org

How to run

Windows

Linux/ MacOS

Building

Testing

Download Project

Clone

Using The Command Line

Using GitHub Desktop

Download Zip File

Community Files

Licence

Changelog

Code of Conduct

Contributing

Security

Support

Rationale

About

Topics

Resources

License

Code of conduct

Security policy

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases 29

Packages 0

Used by 100

Contributors 12

Languages

Packages