Originally published at: Top Open Source licenses in 2025 – Open Source Initiative
The top 20 OSI-Approved licenses most frequently sought out by our community in 2025 based on number of pageviews.
Annual license page view rankings are usually pretty predictable and, frankly, a bit boring. However, if you look closely at this year’s data, some fascinating trends emerge – specifically the entry of the zlib license into the top rankings and the significant climb of 0BSD. Seeing zlib, which is typically a niche license, gain this much traction is genuinely surprising.
The driving force behind this is AI.
While the zlib license is a permissive license similar to MIT, its standout feature is that it does not require copyright attribution for products. In the world of AI models, where managing individual attributions for every component can be a massive headache, zlib has likely gained attention as a pragmatic solution.
We see a similar story with 0BSD. It goes a step further by removing the attribution requirement entirely. In the past, people opted for the Unlicense or CC0 for “public domain-like” software, but those can run into legal gray areas in jurisdictions where you can’t easily waive copyrights. 0BSD solves this by remaining a formal license while functioning as a de facto public domain grant. It’s perfectly suited for the AI era.
I expect this trend toward “attribution-light” licenses to only get stronger next year.