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Avneesh Agarwal
Avneesh Agarwal

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at blog.avneesh.tech

How to add a license to a GitHub repository in less than 2 minutes ✨

Introduction

You should add a license to your open-source projects for making it easier for people to contribute and many hackathons like the ones organized by Hashnode need a license.

Adding the license

  • Go to the repository you want to add the license to and click on Add file
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  • Now click on Create new file. You will be directed to a page like this

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  • Type License as the name of the file and you should see Choose a license template button in the left corner.

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  • Now choose any License you need from the options given.

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  • MIT is one of the most famous licenses, So I am gonna choose that

  • You can add the two details you are asked for there.

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  • You can either create a new branch and commit the file but I am going to commit it directly to the main branch for simplicity.

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You have added a license to your repository 🎉.

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Now you can add it to your Readme as well. Here is a sample of how it is added in many repositories -

## 📝 License

Copyright © 2021 [Avneesh Agarwal](https://github.com/avneesh0612). <br />
This project is [MIT](https://github.com/avneesh0612/next-progress-bar/blob/main/LICENSE) licensed.
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It will look like this in your readme

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Useful links-

Git and GitHub Crash course

GitHub

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