Open Source License Obligation Scanner

Extract license names, attribution duties, copyleft signals, commercial-use limits, notice requirements, and compliance actions from open-source project pages.

Why This Actor Is Useful

This actor helps teams turn open-source project pages, README license sections, and package notices into compliance-ready rows. It is useful when a buyer needs to know whether a dependency is permissive, copyleft, network-copyleft, attribution-only, or risky for commercial distribution.

It does not replace legal advice, but it gives reviewers clean evidence and obligation fields instead of a raw page dump.

What It Extracts

• projectName - Project.
• licenseName - License.
• licenseType - License type.
• commercialUse - Commercial use.
• attributionRequired - Attribution required.
• copyleftSignal - Copyleft signal.
• noticeRequirement - Notice requirement.
• sourceDistributionDuty - Source duty.
• recommendedAction - Recommended action.
• sourceUrl - Source URL.
• evidenceText - Evidence.

Practical Workflows

• Review dependency pages before procurement approval.
• Find copyleft obligations that may require legal review.
• Prepare attribution and notice inventories for shipped products.
• Compare project license risk across a vendor shortlist.

Input

Paste one or more public license, README, repository, package, or project URLs. The actor scans those pages and returns license obligations, commercial-use signals, attribution requirements, copyleft risk, and recommended review actions.

• startUrls - Add public README, license, package, GitHub, npm, PyPI, or project pages that mention an open-source license.
• sourceText - Optional: paste license sections, README license notes, package license text, or dependency review notes. Use this when a page is blocked or you already have the text.
• maxResults - Stop after this many useful rows. Most users can leave this at 100.
• requestTimeoutSecs - How long to wait for each URL. Increase only for slow public pages.

Example Input

{
    "sourceText": [
        "VectorKit is released under AGPL-3.0. Commercial use is allowed, but network service modifications require source code disclosure. Copyright notice and license text must be included.",
        "TinyCharts license: MIT. Permission is granted for commercial use, modification, distribution, and private use. Include copyright notice in copies."
    ],
    "maxResults": 10,
    "requestTimeoutSecs": 20
}

Example Output

{
    "projectName": "VectorKit",
    "licenseName": "AGPL-3.0",
    "licenseType": "network service",
    "commercialUse": "Commercial use is allowed, but network service modifications require source code disclosure",
    "attributionRequired": "Copyright notice and license text must be included",
    "copyleftSignal": "AGPL",
    "noticeRequirement": "license text must be included",
    "sourceDistributionDuty": "source code disclosure",
    "recommendedAction": "AGPL",
    "sourceUrl": "pasted://source-1",
    "evidenceText": "VectorKit is released under AGPL-3.0. Commercial use is allowed, but network service modifications require source code disclosure. Copyright notice and license text must be included."
}

Reliability Notes

The actor is intentionally lightweight and fast. It does not try to bypass captcha systems, private pages, paywalls, or login walls. When a site blocks direct fetching, paste the public visible text into sourceText; the same actor-specific parser will still produce structured rows.

Limitations

• The actor extracts only information present in the supplied source.
• Missing source details remain blank instead of being guessed.
• Highly unusual wording may require pasted text or cleaner source snippets for best results.

Output

Rows are written to the default Apify dataset with actor-specific fields and source evidence. The output is designed for spreadsheets, dashboards, client audits, procurement notes, SEO reports, developer research, and other marketplace buyer workflows.