REUSE — Software License Compliance

Published

June 20, 2025

Modified

June 20, 2025

REUSE¹ — Recommendations for licensing software

…from Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
…SPDX license list²
Add licence information to each file…
- SPDX-FileCopyrightText …publication years and copyright holder
- SPDX-License-Identifier …valid SPDX License Expression
…or create a REUSE.toml³ file

Example

/*
 * SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2024 Jane Doe <jane@example.com>
 *
 * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
 */

Install the reuse⁴ CLI

# install via RPM package
sudo dnf install -y reuse
# install as Python package
pip3 install --user reuse

Usage:

# check compliance
reuse lint

Footnotes

REUSE Software, FSFE
https://reuse.software ↩︎
SPDX License List
https://spdx.org/licenses ↩︎
REUSE.toml
https://reuse.software/spec-3.3/#reusetoml ↩︎
reuse Documentation
https://reuse.readthedocs.io ↩︎

---
title: REUSE — Software License Compliance
date: 2025/06/20
date-modified: 2025/06/20
toc-depth: 3
---

REUSE[^PO9sd] — Recommendations for licensing software

- …from Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
- …SPDX license list[^lk24D]
- Add licence information to each file…
  - `SPDX-FileCopyrightText` …publication years and copyright holder
  - `SPDX-License-Identifier` …valid SPDX License Expression
- …or create a `REUSE.toml`[^lo9HJ] file

[^PO9sd]: REUSE Software, FSFE  
<https://reuse.software>

[^lk24D]: SPDX License List  
<https://spdx.org/licenses>

[^lo9HJ]: `REUSE.toml`  
<https://reuse.software/spec-3.3/#reusetoml>

Example

```c
/*
 * SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2024 Jane Doe <jane@example.com>
 *
 * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
 */
```

Install the `reuse`[^aS3Df] CLI

[^aS3Df]: `reuse` Documentation  
<https://reuse.readthedocs.io>

```bash
# install via RPM package
sudo dnf install -y reuse
# install as Python package
pip3 install --user reuse
```

Usage:

```bash
# check compliance
reuse lint
```