SPDX License List | Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX)

The SPDX License List is an integral part of the SPDX Specification. The SPDX License List itself is a list of commonly found licenses and exceptions used in free and open or collaborative software, data, hardware, or documentation. The SPDX License List includes a standardized short identifier, the full name, the license text, and a canonical permanent URL for each license and exception.

The purpose of the SPDX License List is to enable efficient and reliable identification of such licenses and exceptions in an SPDX document, in source files or elsewhere.

License Exceptions are commonly found exceptions to free and open source licenses, used with the License Expression operator, "WITH" to create a license with an exception.
The matching guidelines define what constitutes a license or exception match. The license text on the HTML pages here will display omitable text in blue and replaceable text in red (see Guideline #2 for more information).
Explanation of fields used on the SPDX License List
License inclusion principles for adding new licenses or exceptions to the SPDX License List
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Use short identifiers in your source code
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Machine readable data files for the SPDX License List

Version: 3.23 2024-02-08

Note: You can sort by each column by clicking on the column header. By default, the table sorts by the Identifier column.

Deprecated License Identifiers

SPDX endeavors to never change the SPDX license identifiers. However, sometimes there has been a compelling reason to deprecate a license identifier, such as to accommodate improved SPDX license expressions or when we have found a duplicate license. When a license identifier is "deprecated" on the SPDX License List, it effectively means that there is an updated license identifier and the deprecated license identifier, while remaining valid, should no longer be used. The URL to each deprecated license is retained and those license pages are updated to note the deprecation. Some reasons for deprecation are as follows:

Release 2.0 of the SPDX Specification introduced License Expressions that supports the ability to identify common variations of SPDX-identified licenses without the need to define each potential variation as a distinct license on the SPDX License List. This new syntax supports the ability to declare an SPDX-identified license exception using the "WITH" operator (e.g. GPL-2.0-or-later WITH Autoconf-exception-2.0), as well as the ability to use a simple "+" operator after a license short identifier to indicate "or later version". SPDX has defined a list of license exceptions to use after the "WITH" operator. As a result, a number of licenses formerly included on the SPDX License List have been deprecated, and correct usage employs the License Expression syntax as of v2.0.
Release 3.0 replaced previous Identifiers for GNU licenses with more explicit Identifiers to reflect the "this version only" or "any later version" option specific to those licenses. As such, the previously used Identifiers for those licenses are deprecated as of v3.0.
Other licenses may have been deprecated for the reasons noted.

SPDX License List | Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX)

Deprecated License Identifiers

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