PHPCS requires a license but my code is closed source

Question

After doing some digging online there doesn't seem to be an immediate answer to this.

I am writing code for a closed source application and when running PHPCS its informing me that an @license tag is required in order to conform to PSR standards.

I cannot apply an open source license to this code because the application is closed source proprietary code.

Does applying an @license tag with "No License" suffice to cover this requirement? Or is there a standard closed source license I should use?

What is the exact message you receive? Anyway it's really only a recommendation — ADyson, Feb 03 '22 at 19:58

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '22 at 20:10

Rather than applying a meaningless @license tag to every file, I'd instead recommend adjusting your config file to just ignore that particular sniff.

You can get the full name of the offending sniff with the -s command line option:

% vendor/bin/phpcs -s
------------------------------------------------------------------
  18 | ERROR   | Missing @license tag in class comment
     |         | (PEAR.Commenting.ClassComment.MissingLicenseTag)

Then add that to an exclude line in your phpcs.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ruleset name="MyProject">
    <rule ref="PEAR">
        <exclude name="PEAR.Commenting.ClassComment.MissingLicenseTag"/>
    </rule>
    <file>src</file>
</ruleset>

PHPCS requires a license but my code is closed source

1 Answers1