The Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit organization that promotes and protects open source software, has published its annual ranking of the most viewed open source licenses in 2025, reflecting the preferences and priorities of developers, organizations, and open source communities worldwide.
At the top of the 2025 rankings is the MIT License, maintaining its long-standing position as the most sought-after open-source license. With approximately 1.53 million pageviews and 925,000 unique visitors, the MIT License’s permissive terms and minimal restrictions remain highly attractive for projects ranging from personal open source repositories to large-scale commercial products.
Fair enough I suppose. There is no guarantee that pageviews reflect usage. In this case though, the error is likely to skew even further towards popularity.
The OSI website is not Distrowatch. Why would a user be looking up a license?
I would say that “I would guess” that the OSI page view ranking mirrors real world popularity. I do not have to guess though as I can see that this is the case. So I will have to settle with saying I am not surprised.
I mean, I would not trust the results too far down the list but I fully expected the first 5 or so to align.