diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 5284403..2d378e0 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ classifiers = [
 dependencies = [
     "click>=8.1.0",
     "rich>=13.0.0",
-    "revenueholdings-license>=0.1.0",
     "pathspec>=0.11.0",
     "pyyaml>=6.0",
 ]
@@ -36,6 +35,7 @@ dev = [
     "pytest>=7.0.0",
     "pytest-cov>=4.0.0",
 ]
+license = ["revenueholdings-license>=0.1.0"]
 
 [project.scripts]
 deadcode = "deadcode.cli:cli"
diff --git a/src/deadcode/cli.py b/src/deadcode/cli.py
index 5b19b4b..5d04733 100644
--- a/src/deadcode/cli.py
+++ b/src/deadcode/cli.py
@@ -10,7 +10,13 @@
 import click
 from rich.console import Console
 from rich.table import Table
-from revenueholdings_license import require_license
+try:
+    from revenueholdings_license import require_license
+except ImportError:
+    import warnings
+    warnings.warn("revenueholdings-license not installed; license checks skipped", stacklevel=2)
+    def require_license(product: str) -> None:  # type: ignore[misc]
+        pass
 
 from . import __version__
 from .config import DeadCodeConfig