[$] GitHub unveils its Licenses API

Since opening its doors in 2008, GitHub has grown to become the largestactive project-hosting service for open-source software. But it hasalso attracted a fair share of criticism for some of itsimplementation choices-with one of the leading complaints beingthat it takes a lax approach to software licensing. That, in turn,leads to a glut of repositories bearing little or no licensingdetails. The company recently announced a new tool to help combat thelicense-confusion issue: a site-wide API for querying and reportinglicense information. Whether that API is up to the task, however,remains to be seen.