3 ms·

> over 80% of projects on Github don’t have an explicit license. I wish more people understood that this is a bad thing. These projects are ones that every bus

by zerohp 10y ago

> over 80% of projects on Github don’t have an explicit license. I wish more people understood that this is a bad thing. These projects are ones that every business should fear more than the GPL3. Copyright is the default in the US, not public domain. Without a license you have no right to redistribute it, or to distribute works derived from it.

Jedd 10y ago
I concur, and the biggest challenge I see, in this case, is the regional one you cite. Happily it's relatively easy to resolve for 99% (a number I just made up) of these 80% of github projects that lack licences -- by either opening an issue, or emailing the author, and seeking clarification. In defence of these unnamed persons, I suspect that if you're about to work with a project that hasn't fielded this type of query previously (and resolved it within their repo) then you're in some troublingly unchartered waters on at least two fronts.
justinlardinois 10y ago
80% of the projects on GitHub don't have an explicit license, but how many of those are actually useful, mature pieces of software that a business would want to use in production? I would guess that a large portion of these projects are just personal projects that have little value to anyone other than their author.
Thiez 10y ago
> I wish more people understood that this is a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? If you represent a business you are free to either refrain from using the project, or send a message to the author(s) and request they add a license. Perhaps the author has no intent to allow others to use their code, and they are merely using github as a convenient place to host their code. Like you said, nobody is allowed to use their code without a license, so why bother to use a private repository? It might be a bad thing if the author actually put their code online with the intent of having random businesses use it, but it's a bit presumptuous to call it a bad thing in general.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Copyright is the default in the US, not public domain. Without a license you have no right to redistribute it, or to distribute works derived from it. The absence of a written license is not necessarily the absence of a license; implied license is a thing. Determining the existence or parameters of an implied license, of course, can be difficult. http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html#implied http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html#implied

by zerohp 10y ago

Jedd 10y ago

I concur, and the biggest challenge I see, in this case, is the regional one you cite. Happily it's relatively easy to resolve for 99% (a number I just made up) of these 80% of github projects that lack licences -- by either opening an issue, or emailing the author, and seeking clarification. In defence of these unnamed persons, I suspect that if you're about to work with a project that hasn't fielded this type of query previously (and resolved it within their repo) then you're in some troublingly unchartered waters on at least two fronts.

justinlardinois 10y ago

80% of the projects on GitHub don't have an explicit license, but how many of those are actually useful, mature pieces of software that a business would want to use in production? I would guess that a large portion of these projects are just personal projects that have little value to anyone other than their author.

Thiez 10y ago

> I wish more people understood that this is a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? If you represent a business you are free to either refrain from using the project, or send a message to the author(s) and request they add a license. Perhaps the author has no intent to allow others to use their code, and they are merely using github as a convenient place to host their code. Like you said, nobody is allowed to use their code without a license, so why bother to use a private repository? It might be a bad thing if the author actually put their code online with the intent of having random businesses use it, but it's a bit presumptuous to call it a bad thing in general.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Copyright is the default in the US, not public domain. Without a license you have no right to redistribute it, or to distribute works derived from it. The absence of a written license is not necessarily the absence of a license; implied license is a thing. Determining the existence or parameters of an implied license, of course, can be difficult. http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html#implied http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html#implied