Self-hosted Media Management: what licence are you actually agreeing to

“Self-hosted” and “open source” are not the same promise, and the lists that recommend these projects rarely separate them. This page sorts 26 media management projects by the licence you are actually agreeing to, as read on 2026-08-20.

11 of 26 are permissive: run them, change them, keep your changes to yourself. 4 are AGPL, where serving a modified copy over a network obliges you to publish those changes, which is the clause that catches people who self-host for a team. 0 are not open source at all, carrying a proprietary or restricted-use licence. The remaining 11 are ordinary copyleft.

Project	Licence	What that means	Stars	Maintenance	Language
Seerr	MIT	Permissive, no strings	12,323	Active	TypeScript
Youtarr	ISC	Permissive, no strings	1,522	Active	TypeScript
Watcharr	MIT	Permissive, no strings	1,472	Active	Go
MyTube	MIT	Permissive, no strings	1,133	Active	TypeScript
Lidify	MIT	Permissive, no strings	595	Active	Python
PodFetch	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	501	Active	Rust
Deleterr	MIT	Permissive, no strings	333	Active	Python
YoutubeDL-Server	MIT	Permissive, no strings	314	Active	Vue
youtube-dl-nas	MIT	Permissive, no strings	191	Active	Python
MKVPriority	MIT	Permissive, no strings	72	Active	Python
TrackWatch	MIT	Permissive, no strings	25	Active	Python
Sonarr	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	15,174	Active	C#
Radarr	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	14,185	Active	C#
Lidarr	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	5,570	Active	C#
Ombi	GPL-2.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	4,104	Active	C#
yt-dlp Web UI	MPL-2.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	2,549	Active	Go
Medusa	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	1,981	Active	Python
nefarious	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	1,277	Active	Python
Reaparr	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	686	Active	C#
Downtify	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	480	Active	Python
LidaTube	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	358	Active	Python
ydl_api_ng	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	240	Active	Python
MeTube	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	14,457	Active	Python
Pinchflat	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	5,270	Slowing	Elixir
tubesync	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	2,778	Active	Python
ChannelTube	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	325	Active	Python

What the licence column means

Permissive (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD, ISC): do what you like, keep changes private.
Copyleft (GPL, LGPL, MPL, EPL): changes you distribute must ship their source.
AGPL, network copyleft: the same, and running it for others over a network counts as distribution. This is the one that surprises people who self-host for a team or a side business.
Source-available (SSPL, BUSL, Elastic, Commons Clause): not open source. Reading and self-use are usually fine; offering it as a service is not.
Other / unstated: the dataset lists no licence we could classify. Check the repo before you rely on it.

The Maintenance column is a second, independent check: the age of the most recent commit on the default branch, read from the GitHub API on 2026-08-20. Active is within 180 days, Slowing is 180 to 365, Dormant is over a year, Archived means the maintainer marked the repo read-only, and Not measured means the project is hosted outside GitHub so the check does not apply.

Source data from awesome-selfhosted-data, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Licence family grouping and maintenance status are computed by this site (from the upstream licence fields and the GitHub API) and are not part of the upstream dataset. Licence classification is a summary, not legal advice: check the project’s own LICENSE file before you rely on it. This page is published under the same licence.