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Inspired by the "crayon" licence question - what if I'm the kind of individual who finds this whole copyright business infinitely annoying and frustrating, and don't want to deal with legalese AT ALL? What would happen if I just wrote my piece of code, put it up public on GitHub or wherever, and NOT include any kind of licence at all? Would that still amount to "open source" and "free to use and modify"? My reasoning:

  • No licence means no restrictions
  • Anyone can just take my code and use it and I won't be able to do anything about it
  • If someone has the audacity to take my code, slap a licence on it, and then sue me for violating their copyright, I still have proof (in the form of GitHub commits/arhive.org/whatever) that I had the code first, so they are lying about them being the author.

I'm guessing that our f...abulous legal system will probably still find a way to screw me over this, otherwise it would be a popular approach. But I'm curious about why exactly is this a bad idea and not being done.

Vilx-
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  • Does this answer your question? What can I assume if a publicly published project has no license? or tl;dr: "No license means no restrictions" is absolutely the opposite of what happens. – Philip Kendall Sep 25 '22 at 08:50
  • @PhilipKendall - Ahh, fcuk, I knew it. This is why we can't have nice things. :P Anyways, thanks! :) – Vilx- Sep 25 '22 at 09:07
  • Would the FSF unlimited license meet your needs? The only restriction the license imposes that another person can't re-license the code (and then sue you). – doneal24 Sep 25 '22 at 13:10
  • "No licence means no restrictions" That would be a horrible rule for two reasons: 1) We generally don't require people to put notices on their property to prevent other people from feeling justified in taking and using them. Requiring such defensive noticing makes society worse. 2) How would you know that you just didn't have the license and that one existed? Anyone can remove a license and redistribute something. Do we want to create lots of innocent victims who thought there were no restrictions or whose works were stolen due to wrong assumptions? – David Schwartz Sep 26 '22 at 00:05
  • If you don't like legalise, have you considered the MIT license? It's short, straightforward and permissive. It's a popular choice so it's also well established and recognized. – Brandin Sep 26 '22 at 05:45
  • @Brandin - No, it's OK. I know there are many good and simple licenses out there. This was more of a theoretical question. I was curious about what would happen without any license at all. :) – Vilx- Sep 26 '22 at 08:34

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