Open Source Licensing Debate Has Positive Effect On GitHub 96
New submitter Lemeowski writes "Critics have been pounding GitHub recently, claiming it is hosting tons of code with no explicit software license. The debate was thrust into the limelight last year when James Governor of RedMonk issued an acclaimed tweet about young developers being 'about POSS — post open source software,' meaning they disliked or avoided licensing and governance. Red Hat's IP attorney Richard Fontana explores the complaint saying there is a positive aspect of the POSS and GitHub phenomenon: Developers are, for the first time in the history of free software, helping inform each other about licensing and aiding in the selection process. The result is that it's becoming easier to suggest legal improvements to GitHub-hosted repositories."
Re:Public Domain should be the default (Score:3, Informative)
It's also a violation of the Bern Convention. Github cannot legally strip a work of its copyright status just because a license wasn't chosen by the developer. In the countries with public domain it has to be explicitly declared as such by the author.
Re:Was just thinking about this (Score:4, Informative)
2 clause BSD. If you don't care about licensing, that is the license you should use. It is proven in the field and most other open source/free software licenses are compatible with it. It is pretty much as close to public domain you can get while still keeping your name on the source code and avoiding problems with implied warranties.
First time? (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? In the 17-odd years I've been using Free Software, I've never known there not to be an ongoing public discussion amongst developers about licensing.