Your License Is Your Interface 356
dp619 writes "License-free software has become a thing. Only 14.9% of repositories on GitHub have a license, according to recent Software Freedom Law Center research. Red Monk has observed that this trend is occurring principally among younger software developers. Outercurve Foundation technical evangelist Eric Schultz has offered up his opinion, saying, 'As an active developer I want to add a slightly different perspective on the dangers of releasing unlicensed software. My perspective is based on a simple phrase: "Your License Is Your Interface."' He adds, 'A license similarly defines the interaction between the software, or more precisely the creators of the software, and users. Just like an interface, a license defines intended behavior of users of the software, such as the four essential freedoms or the ten pillars of the Open Source Definition. Just like an interface, a license prevents unintended behavior of users of the software, which depending on the open source license, may disclaim the original author of liability for use of the software, prohibit redistribution without recognizing the original author or prohibit distribution of derivatives under a more restrictive license. When it comes to legal use and distribution of your software, your license IS your interface.'"
Re:and if license picking were mandatory... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:and if license picking were mandatory... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that posts like this always get modded down by OSS-fanatics, but it is true. If I was to write a small piece of software and wanted people to actually use it, I would never release as GPL. Every company I've worked for refuses to use GPL code, at least for some kinds of applications.
Release as BSD or similar with a warranty disclaimer and be done with it. That way it might actually be widely useful. Pretty much every industry-standard de-facto library I can think of is BSD licensed, such as openSSL. if openSSL was GPL, no one would use it.
Then you're stuck with GitHub's terms. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what GitHub says in their terms of service [github.com]:
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.
That creates some interesting issues. When someone "forks" something, what rights do they have?
I suspect that many people not specifying a license for what they put on GitHub just assume GitHub owns everything.
Re:Advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, not legally. Code is automatically copyrighted in any Berne signatory country. You can not relicense a work that you do not hold the copyright to.
Re:and if license picking were mandatory... (Score:5, Interesting)
I make the observation quite frequently that people who complain about the GPL never seems to realize that you can just contact the original developer and negotiate with him a different license. For a big project like the Linux kernel there is of course the problem to contact every contributor, but most projects are rather small or the copyrights are belonging to a company or organization.
So if you see a GPL code out there just think of it as a demo version, that is fully functional. If you want to take the code for your proprietary project, you can contact the developer and negotiate a different license.
Re:Then you're stuck with GitHub's terms. (Score:2, Interesting)
Anon because I have mod points.
"Fork" in git means copy AND MODIFY, potentially as a new project.