Akien {l Wrote}:To conclude this formless comment, I wanted to insist on my belief that most people posting code without license on GitHub don't want to forbid re-use. They just don't know that not choosing a license *implies* that their code can't be reused. They are used to copy-pasting code from StackExchange or forums, and don't know that all such content is subject to intellectual property rights even when they willingly chose to publish this content for everybody to read.
Duion {l Wrote}:The only thing that is pretty safe is a contract where a work is explicitely sold to someone and signed by the parties.
Duion {l Wrote}:But licenses for code are often ridiculous, since a skilled programmer can just rewrite the thing on his own and it will belong to him, nobody can claim a patent on a mathematical formula or a logical mechanism.
To detect what license, if any, a project is licensed under, we used an open source Ruby gem called Licensee to compare the repository's LICENSE file to a short list of known licenses. However, it's important to note that this approach doesn't count a project as licensed if the README indicates a specific license or if individual project files contain a named license in the code comments.
charlie {l Wrote}:No open source software I have ever worked on has come with a LICENSE file.
Duion {l Wrote}:The people that care most about licenses, especially writing their name into something tend also be the most incompetent ones.
It is often said that law is a kind of trade-off. You give up some of your personal freedom and what you get in return is a civilised way of resolving conflicts. But in the world of open source it's hard to think about it as a trade-off. You get obstacles and all kinds of legal threats, even criminalisation of what is, in many ways, a philanthropic enterprise. You get crypto wars and you get software patents and you get copyrightable APIs. And you get nothing in return. Can you think of a single case where law have helped you solve a problem you had in open source land?
Julius {l Wrote}:Hehe, I knew this would be controversial
charlie {l Wrote}:The assumption of this 'LICENSE' file standard is so preposterous that the entire premise of the article and discussion should be dismissed.
oln {l Wrote}:charlie {l Wrote}:The assumption of this 'LICENSE' file standard is so preposterous that the entire premise of the article and discussion should be dismissed.
The licence chooser when you create a repository on github gives a LICENSE file if you pick a licence, so checking for that does makes some sense, even though one shouldn't base the data solely on that.
Akien {l Wrote}:You totally missed my point apparently. At least I've tried...
charlie {l Wrote}:Akien {l Wrote}:You totally missed my point apparently. At least I've tried...
No, I didn't miss your point. You are trying to say there is a trend based on vacuous nonsense. You "generously" allowed for adjusting the estimate from 20% licensed to "30% or 40%" based on, I dunno, a hunch? Based on what? Come back with some actual facts and figures and then maybe the discussion goes somewhere.
Akien {l Wrote}:Of course it's not fully accurate, but it still does show a trend: Among the GitHub projects, there is a big drop in the number of projects with a LICENSE file between 2008 and 2015. So there are two possible conclusions:
1) Either the new GitHub repos tend not to define a license at all (which is the assumption made in this article, even though it's not fully accurate based on the limitations of the analysis)
2) Or the new GitHub repos define a license, but they're cooler kids so they prefer to put their license in HEY_README_TO_KNOW_YOUR_RIGHTS_AND_OBLIGATIONS.txt
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