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Missing license information for repositories due to unrecognized license filename #194
Description
Projects under aboutcode-org are lacking license information in the 'About' section.
In addition, the github API responses do not provide license details (e.g., license: null)
For instance,
https://api.github.com/repos/aboutcode-org/purldb
https://api.github.com/repos/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit
This happens because GitHub does not recognize apache-2.0.LICENSE as a valid license file. It only looks for files named LICENSE, LICENSE.md etc. Since the project repositories don't have these files, GitHub is unable to detect the license.
Activity
pombredanne commentedon Jul 15, 2025
@LuciferVid what about fixing GitHub license detection instead?
chinyeungli commentedon Jul 15, 2025
@LuciferVid Thanks for the effort. I think what @pombredanne meant is that instead of renaming the current license file from
apache-2.0.LICENSEtoLICENSE, we should explore ways to request github to adjust its license detection behavior.CodeMaverick-143 commentedon Oct 1, 2025
@chinyeungli is this issue still open , Can I contribute to it ?
CodeMaverick-143 commentedon Oct 1, 2025
@LuciferVid Ok
chinyeungli commentedon Oct 1, 2025
@LuciferVid Yes. Thanks for the clarification.
vanshika2424agr commentedon Dec 14, 2025
@chinyeungli is this issue still open? can i have any chance to contribute here?
chinyeungli commentedon Dec 14, 2025
@vanshika2424agr Thanks for your interest. I’ve already submitted a request to GitHub to update their license detection behavior (https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/181937), since we don’t want to rely on the renaming approach (see the comments above). At this point, I don’t think there’s anything else that needs to be done.
Run 'mv apache-2.0.LICENSE LICENSE' & update config
fix: rename license file for GitHub recognition