Registry of Unencumbered Software Projects

This is a collaborative metadata registry of unencumbered public-domain software projects. That encompasses all projects using the Unlicense, Creative Commons Zero (CC0), or a plain old public-domain dedication.

Project metadata are described in JSON format, one file per project, utilizing the terms from the DOAP (Description of a Project) schema.

The current plan is that this project metadata will be made available in HTML, JSON, and JSON-LD format at Unlicense.org going forward.

Note

The project showcase on the Unlicense.org front page is meant as a curated collection of popular, high-quality software projects. The inclusion of a project in this registry is no guarantee of getting listed as a showcase.

Example Project Descriptions

SQLite

See projects/sqlite.json for an example of how to describe a project:

{
  "name": "SQLite",
  "homepage": "https://sqlite.org",
  "shortdesc": {
    "en": "The most used database engine in the world."
  },
  "download-page": "https://sqlite.org/download.html",
  "repository": {
    "browse": "https://sqlite.org/src",
    "location": "http://sqlite.org/cgi/src"
  },
  "license": "https://sqlite.org/copyright.html"
}

RDF.rb

See projects/rdf.rb.json for an example of how to describe a typical project hosted on GitHub:

{
  "name": "RDF.rb",
  "homepage": "https://rubygems.org/gems/rdf",
  "shortdesc": {
    "en": "A Ruby library for working with Resource Description Framework (RDF) data."
  },
  "download-page": "https://rubygems.org/gems/rdf",
  "repository": {
    "browse": "https://github.com/ruby-rdf/rdf",
    "location": "https://github.com/ruby-rdf/rdf.git"
  },
  "license": "https://github.com/ruby-rdf/rdf/blob/develop/UNLICENSE"
}

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How can I suggest a project without submitting a pull request?

A: To just suggest a project addition, kindly tweet at @bendiken on X (formerly known as Twitter). We do not want a long backlog and clutter of unimplemented, drive-by issues here; hence this repository accepts only pull requests, not issues.

Q: Will you accept WTFPL or 0BSD projects?

A: No, as these are not public-domain dedications but rather maximally-permissive copyright licenses. Please see Licensed, License-Free, and Unlicensed Code.

Q: Will you accept non-software projects in the public domain?

A: No, not in this registry. Consider submitting non-software projects to johnjago/awesome-uncopyright instead.

See Also

• nothings/single_file_libs: single-file public-domain C/C++ libraries with minimal dependencies
• johnjago/awesome-uncopyright: a curated list of works in the public domain (our fork)

Contributions

Tip

All material in this repository is itself placed in the public domain.