[DOCS] Open Source Licensing

Status Closed — not planned

Maintainer reply None cached

Activity 8 comments · opened Sep 30, 2025 · closed Jan 15, 2026

Documentation Type

Missing documentation (feature not documented)

Documentation Location

https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/legal-and-compliance

Section/Topic

Open Source Licensing

Current Documentation

_No response_

What's Wrong or Missing?

The Claude Code binaries distributed by Anthropic contain Open Source software.

Some of that software is made available to Anthropic under the terms of the Apache-2.0 license, however there does not appear to be a notice of this in the distributed files, nor on the Claude Code documentation website.

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Suggested Improvement

I am not a lawyer, but I believe attribution is required under the terms of the Open Source software being used.

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Impact

Medium - Makes feature difficult to understand

Additional Context

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

8 Comments

sindresorhus · 11 months ago

It's also using Ink (I'm the maintainer), which is MIT licensed, and that requires including the license.

Also, not required at all, but seeing how Ink is what powers the UI for Claude Code, it would have been nice with a shoutout somewhere.

lovell · 11 months ago

Since creating this issue, to help cut through the noise of >5k other issues, I opened a support ticket directly with Anthropic. The most recent reply, received over 2 weeks ago, said:

Your report regarding Apache-2.0 license compliance has been forwarded to the appropriate team for review. However, I need to set realistic expectations that this type of review takes time and we may not have a response quickly. Legal and compliance reviews follow their own timeline. We take licensing compliance seriously and your feedback has been documented. We'll follow up with you once we have information to share.

github-actions[bot] · 10 months ago

This issue has been inactive for 30 days. If the issue is still occurring, please comment to let us know. Otherwise, this issue will be automatically closed in 30 days for housekeeping purposes.

lovell · 10 months ago

Commenting to keep this issue open.

github-actions[bot] · 9 months ago

This issue has been automatically closed due to 60 days of inactivity. If you're still experiencing this issue, please open a new issue with updated information.

lovell · 9 months ago

Commenting in an attempt to re-open this issue.

marcindulak · 9 months ago

This issue was closed incorrectly despite recent human comments. This behavior of the bot is reported at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/16497. Please upvote that issue, so maybe it gets noticed.

github-actions[bot] · 8 months ago

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.