I highly recommend learning about copyright and licensing. If you use or contribute to open source software, it's a must, IMO. Here's a post of mine which would be a good start: http://stackoverflow.com/a/11455485/247696
Based on the number of GitHub projects which don't include a LICENSE or COPYING file, I would say you are not alone.
Based on the number of GitHub projects which don't include a LICENSE or COPYING file, I would say you are not alone.