# fossology/fossology

FOSSology is an open source license compliance software system and toolkit.  As a toolkit you can run license, copyright and export control scans from the command line.  As a system, a database and web ui are provided to give you a compliance workflow. License, copyright and export scanners are tools used in the workflow.

Repository: https://github.com/fossology/fossology
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/fossology
Homepage: https://fossology.github.io/
Language: HTML
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: fossology, spdx, license-management, license, compliance, oss, license-checking, license-scan, compliance-check, compliance-automation, spdx-licenses
Last push: 2026-08-31T13:30:28+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 87/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 100, release rhythm 64, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4615, "days_push": 2, "days_rel": 83, "gap_med": 98.5, "n_releases_24m": 5}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1024, forks 636 (observed 2026-09-01T02:14:01.534956+00:00)

## What it is
FOSSology is an open source license compliance system and toolkit that scans software for licenses, copyrights, and export control data. It provides both a command-line toolkit and a web-based system with a database for managing compliance workflows and generating SPDX reports.

## Use cases
- scan a codebase for open source licenses
- generate an SPDX document for my project
- extract copyright notices from software
- run license compliance checks in CI
- audit an entire Linux distro for license obligations
- detect export control and copyright data in source files

## When to choose
- you need automated license and copyright scanning at scale with deduplication
- you want a web UI workflow for compliance review with SPDX export
- you need to scan large codebases or whole distributions efficiently

## When to avoid
- you only need a lightweight license identifier for a single file
- you need legal advice rather than automated scanning
- you cannot run PHP, PostgreSQL, and Apache infrastructure

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: search-engine, web-scraping, parser, developer-tools, self-hosted, cli, gui
- domain: developer-tools, legal, security
- platform: self-hosted, cli
- tags: license-compliance, spdx, license-scanning, copyright-detection, export-control, open-source-compliance, php, postgresql, open-source, licensing, linux, docker, web-server

## Member repositories
- fossology/fossology (main) score 87

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:01.534956+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:08:50.348696+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/fossology/fossology (fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:01.534956+00:00, sha 357408f2ca7a)
  - homepage: https://fossology.github.io/ (fetched 2026-08-29T13:09:04.287556+00:00, sha d8bf1926cb84)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.