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My impression is that the intent is to mitigate the possible legal issues raised by the numerous repositories without license. It seems a little far fetch, but
by kakwa_ 10y ago
My impression is that the intent is to mitigate the possible legal issues raised by the numerous repositories without license.
It seems a little far fetch, but I imagine that accessing and reading content subject to copyrights can be punished legally in some (many?) countries, even if the content is de facto public.
(A book published by accident on an open http server is not that different).
Also, GitHub having a proeminent "fork" button can be seen as an invitation to violate copyrights, making the service somewhat responsible.
However, I'm certainly not a lawyer and I can't determine accurately the implication of this paragraph (intentional or accidental).
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago> Also, GitHub having a proeminent "fork" button can be seen as an invitation to violate copyrights, making the service somewhat responsible. What about simply not having a visible 'fork' button for Repository's without a license? IANAL but a supposed automated license grant to Github doesn't sound like very convincing legal rights for use of software (even if the forking itself is legal)? >> Is the theory here that this negates FOSS licenses, over-riding copyleft terms with permissive terms? I was under the impression that Copy-Left licenses weren't "over-ridable" at all. That is the original author of the content could grant Github a parallel license but most e.g. GPLed projects have multiple contributors and any grant to Github in violation of their CLA's wouldn't stand. Could you correct if and where this is incorrect?