How to Set Up Creative Commons Licenses for GitHub Repositories

This article has been migrated and restructured from Qiita.

When creating a GitHub repository in a web browser, you can set various open-source licenses using the "Choose a license" field.

However, "free licenses" other than open-source licenses cannot be set there. This article introduces how to manually set CC Licenses for a GitHub repository.

The license for a GitHub repository can be specified in a LICENSE file directly under the repository root. Therefore, we will set the legal code of the CC Licenses as the LICENSE file.

Text versions of the CC Licenses legal code can be obtained from the following links:

• CC BY 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC BY-SA 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC BY-NC 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC BY-ND 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (plaintext)
• CC0 1.0 legalcode.txt

Rename the obtained text file to LICENSE, place it in the repository root, and commit & push. This will make the repository's web display look something like this:

For example, while Zenn does not have a feature to set a license for articles, it is possible to set a license for the GitHub repository itself.
By the way, I have applied a CC BY-SA license to the repository for my articles here.

Please note that CC Licenses are not tuned for program code. If you wish to grant permission for the use of program code under a "free license," I strongly recommend applying an open-source license.

[Addition] Markdown Format License Files

It seems some people provide the CC Licenses legal code in Markdown format.

• idleberg/Creative-Commons-Markdown: Markdown-formatted Creative Commons licenses

You can probably take the file from there and place it with the name LICENSE.md. However, GitHub doesn't seem to interpret these files, so the license type may not be displayed on the repository's web interface.

Still, it's true that Markdown is more human-readable. If anything, you could also use Shields.io to create a badge.

[Update 2021-09-26] It seems that Markdown format license files can now be recognized. Thank you for the information.

References

• Plaintext versions of Creative Commons licenses and CC0 - Creative Commons
• Plaintext versions of Creative Commons 4.0 licenses - Creative Commons
• Revised 3rd Edition: About CC Licenses | text.Baldanders.info
• Summary of characteristics of many open source licenses | Coliss