No, sadly this won’t fly in court. For the same reason you cannot publish a private corporate repo with an MIT license and then have other people claim in “goo

No, sadly this won’t fly in court. For the same reason you cannot publish a private corporate repo with an MIT license and then have other people claim in “good faith” to be using it. All they need is to assert that the license was published in error, or that the person publishing it did not have the authority to publish it. You can’t “magically” make a license stick by putting it in a repo, any more than putting a “name here” sticker on someone’s car and then claiming to own it. The license file in the repo is simply the notice of the license. It does not indicate a binding legal agreement. You of course, can challenge it in court, and ianal, but I assure you, there is president in incorrectly labelled repos removing and changing their licenses.