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I have some code of which I don't care that much about. That what I host online, has no license and as such should be in the public domain.

Some projects contain files with: GNU Lesser General Public License (version 2.1).

I understand that projects containing files with such licence must have all source code available to the public (which I have).

Must all source files in the same projects therefor also be provided with a GPL license or can I just keep my source codes licence-less as they are now.

bask185
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    To start off, note that the Lesser GPL and GPL are different licenses, with very different requirements in this case. Do you want answers for the GPL itself (as per your title) or LGPL (as per your example)? – Philip Kendall May 12 '23 at 21:35
  • Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. – Community May 13 '23 at 12:12
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    In addition to the important distinction between the GPL and LGPL (without which we can't answer the question), two other notes: (1) a license is permission to use a copyrighted work, so copyrightable works with no license (i.e., works whose authors grant no permission) are by default all-rights-reserved, not in the public domain and (2) it would be helpful to note how this (L)GPL work is used -- as a library? Shell script? Data file? – apsillers May 13 '23 at 13:17
  • Do you actually want to provide all of your files under the terms of the LGPL, or do you want to provide all of your files (sans the LGPL files) under different, more permissive terms (or completely different terms, even)? For example, if I take your code and I delete all of the LGPL code, then what permissions do you want to give me for using all of the other source code that you personally wrote? – Brandin May 15 '23 at 07:06
  • Are the other files derivative works of the GPL files? It is not necessary that if you combine two things and one is GPL, the other must be GPL. It is necessary that the overall combination must be GPL. (e.g. file1.c file2.c -> program; file1 is GPL, program is GPL, file2 can be GPL or LGPL or public domain or whatever). The other rule is any derivative of a GPL must be GPL so if file2 is based on file1 it has to be GPL. (or AGPL) – user253751 May 15 '23 at 15:15
  • Thanks that is all I needed to know. My own files are not derivatives from GPL code – bask185 May 16 '23 at 08:19
  • "That what I host online, has no license and as such should be in the public domain." – That's not correct. If there is no license, that means that nobody has your permission to do anything with your code. No license means that everything is prohibited (except for fair use; that's legally impossible to prohibit). – Tanner Swett May 18 '23 at 21:48
  • I thought, that I had to had to use a copyright line for that purpose. I always thought, that no licensing equals public domain. – bask185 May 21 '23 at 11:27

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