head to head · open source
lynis vs fossology
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. fossology has 1,044 stars, 675 forks, 290 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 1,491% (16,611 vs 1,044 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; fossology is written in HTML under GPL-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, fossology 65%. fossology was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (compliance), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| lynis | fossology | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 675 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lynis if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fossology if
- You want the fossology feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and fossology fits your workflow better
About lynis
[Documentation] [Documentation]: Do you like this software? Star the project and become a stargazer. lynis Lynis Security auditing and hardening tool, for UNIX based systems. Lynis is a security auditing tool for systems based on UNIX like Linux, macOS, BSD, and others. It performs an in depth security scan and runs on the system itself. The primary goal is to test security defenses and provide tips for further system hardening . It will also scan for general system information, vulnerable software packages, and possible configuration issues. Lynis was commonly used by system administrators and auditors to…
read the full lynis overview →
About fossology
FOSSology About FOSSology is an open source license compliance software system and toolkit. As a toolkit, you can run license, copyright, and export control scans from the command line. As a system, a database and web UI are provided to give you a compliance workflow. In one click you can generate an SPDX file or a ReadMe with all the copyrights notices from your software. FOSSology deduplication means that you can scan an entire distro, rescan a new version, and only the changed files will get rescanned. This is a big time saver for large projects. Check out Who Uses FOSSology! FOSSology does not give legal…
read the full fossology overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or fossology more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and fossology has 1,044. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and fossology free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and fossology under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and fossology?
lynis is written in Shell and fossology in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lynis or fossology?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose fossology if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.