

Choosing an Open Source License - cleverjake
https://github.com/blog/1530-choosing-an-open-source-license

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jballanc
Thankyouthankyouthankyou! This has been one of my longest outstanding gripes
with GitHub. By not including any mention of licensing when creating a new
public repo, I feel that GitHub was tacitly encouraging the "licenses are for
lawyers not hackers" mindset.

For anyone who still doesn't think licenses are a big deal, I would wager that
you have never:

a) worked for a company with > $1B in assets

b) worked for a startup that might be acquired by a company with > $1B in
assets

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gioele
One question: how can the "no-license" option (i.e. "Copyright [year]
[fullname]") allow "Private Use" and "Commercial Use"?

I think that what is allowed is highly dependent from the laws you can or want
apply. There is a vast difference between what is allowed by such a short
statement in the US or in UK or in Germany.

[1] [http://choosealicense.com/no-license/](http://choosealicense.com/no-
license/)

~~~
doughj3
[IANAL] Copyright does not cover use, it covers distribution and similar
rights. In order to cover use, you need a patent.

That said, I'm not sure if downloading the source from Github constitutes any
form of reproduction or distribution. From what the page you linked to says,
that may be covered by Github terms of service.

~~~
gioele
> Copyright does not cover use

Copyright _does_ cover use in many (most?) countries, especially EU countries.

This difference between US and EU author's rights has been widely debated for
the JSON licence that states "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.",
making it a non-free licence because it restricts the field of use.

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zeckalpha
I'd like to see this combined with
[https://licentious.herokuapp.com/](https://licentious.herokuapp.com/)

~~~
gjtorikian
I already did: [http://www.addalicense.com/](http://www.addalicense.com/)

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kmfrk
GitHub - of all places - still needs support for Contributor License
Agreements (CLAs) and a bot to support it, though. But it's a good step in the
right direction.

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hltbra
Someone finally created a page with that. Thank you.

