Currently, when a new project is created, it gets initialized with an empty code base with suggestions as below:

However, along with the suggested actions (adding files, setting up build spec, or pushing an existing repository), another suggestion can be added to add a LICENSE file with the appropriate license which could be selected from a dropdown menu:

Another alternative approach to the above can be similar to how build configuration files are detected when creating a file with name .onedev-buildspec.yml. In case of licenses, whenever a file with name which matches the regex pattern

/(LICENSE)|(license)/

is being created, the bottom section of the interface would be populated with the available licenses:

Upon selecting the associated license option from the dropdown menu, a new license file would be created with the contents containing the associated license terms.

The following can be referred to for implementing the above:

• Documentation on different licenses:
  • https://opensource.org/licenses/
  • https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
• API details for retrieving license details:
  • https://docs.github.com/en/rest/licenses

PS: Something similar can be done for .gitignore file templates as well (but that might be out of scope of this issue).