{"slug": "i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones", "title": "I Built an Awesome List for Open-Source GEO Tools. The Licence Check Cut the Popular Ones.", "summary": "A developer built Awesome Open GEO, a curated list of 62 open-source tools for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), requiring all entries to be free to run and OSI-licensed. The list excludes popular tools like firecrawl/llmstxt-generator and Canonry due to missing or restrictive licenses, highlighting the difference between true open-source and labeled-only open-source.", "body_md": "Generative Engine Optimization is the unglamorous name for a real problem: your content now has to be findable, parsable and citable by systems that answer instead of link. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews. The [original GEO paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735) from KDD 2024 showed the levers differ from classic SEO — citations, statistics and quotable structure move the needle where keyword density does essentially nothing.\n\nThe tooling around it is almost entirely paid SaaS. There are two existing awesome-lists for GEO and both are good, but their tools sections read like a funding announcement: Profound, Otterly, Goodie, Semrush. Useful if you have a budget. Useless if you want to read the source and run it yourself.\n\nSo I built the other half: ** Awesome Open GEO** — 62 entries, one criterion,\n\n`awesome-lint`\n\nclean.Every entry has to be **free to run and published under an OSI-approved licence.**\n\nThat sounds like a formality. It is the entire list.\n\nTwo of the most-linked tools in this space didn't make it, and explaining why is more useful than the list itself.\n\n** firecrawl/llmstxt-generator** — 534 stars, genuinely handy, generates\n\n`llms.txt`\n\nand `llms-full.txt`\n\nfor any site. It has `LICENSE`\n\nfile** Canonry** — 99 stars, an AEO monitoring platform, source fully readable. Licensed\n\nNeither of those is a criticism of the projects. A missing licence file is usually an oversight, and FSL is a deliberate, defensible business decision. But a list that calls itself open-source has to actually check, or the label means nothing.\n\nI found the same pattern repeatedly: repos described as \"open source\" in their own README with no licence in the tree, and \"open\" platforms whose licence quietly excludes competing use. If you're picking a tool to build on, that distinction is the difference between a dependency and a liability.\n\nI did not want to hand-pick from memory, so:\n\n`topic:generative-engine-optimization`\n\n, `topic:llms-txt`\n\n, `topic:answer-engine-optimization`\n\n, `topic:ai-visibility`\n\n, plus keyword searches), producing `llms.txt`\n\n.`curl`\n\n'd every linkTen sections, ordered so a newcomer can start at the top:\n\n`llms.txt`\n\n, Schema.org, `ai.robots.txt`\n\n, and Joost de Valk's Website SpecificationSelf-submissions are welcome and don't need an apology — just disclose it in the PR. My own audit tool is in there exactly once, under the same rules, with no special placement.\n\nThe bar is in [contributing.md](https://github.com/cloudapp-dev/awesome-open-geo/blob/main/contributing.md). Removals count as contributions too: if something on the list is abandoned, relicensed away from open source, or simply worse than it looked, open an issue and I'll cut it.\n\n**Repo: github.com/cloudapp-dev/awesome-open-geo**\n\nThe niche is young enough that a lot of good work isn't on the list yet. If you maintain something that clears the bar, I'd rather hear it from you than find it in six months.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/cloudapp_dev/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-popular-ones-1b0", "published_at": "2026-07-30 11:23:47+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-30 11:35:09.295729+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["firecrawl", "Canonry", "Open Source Initiative", "KDD", "Joost de Valk"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-awesome-list-for-open-source-geo-tools-the-licence-check-cut-the-ones.jsonld"}}