description: "You're under no obligation to choose a license and it's your right not to include one with your code or project. But please note that opting out of open source licenses doesn't mean you're opting out of copyright law."
You'll have to check with your own legal counsel regarding your particular project, but generally speaking, the absence of a license means that default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.
Disallowing use of your code might not be what you intend by "no license." An [open-source license](/) allows reuse of your code while retaining copyright. If your goal is to completely opt-out of copyright restrictions, try a [public domain dedication](/licenses/#unlicense).
Even in the absence of a license file, you may grant some rights in cases where you publish your source code to a site that requires accepting terms of service. For example, if you publish your source code in a public repository on GitHub, you have accepted the [Terms of Service](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service), which serves as an implicit quasi-license (via section F1), permitting others to view and fork your repository; but this alone does not allow for the kinds of collaboration that people usually seek on a public code host, such as experimentation, modification, and sharing as fostered by a copyleft or open-source license.
If you find software that doesn't have a license, that generally means you have no permission from the creators of the software to use, modify, or share the software. To be clear, although a code host such as GitHub may allow you to download and/or fork the codebase, this does not imply that you are permitted to modify, share, or use the work for any purpose other than perhaps evaluation or private study. Unfortunately, the existence or limits of such implied permissions are often not clearly defined and one should be aware of the implications of such vagueness. One would be safe to assume that no unspecified permissions are granted even if they are technically possible or even facilitated by the provider. The GitHub Terms of Service, for example, explicitly permits only "viewing" and "forking" of public repos. It does not explicitly permit the work to be "used" for any purpose at all (e.g. not downloading, nor compiling, nor executing). So one may fork a non-licenced repo, but they can do no more with it than "view" it; rendering such forks quite pointless. GitHub also facilitates cloning your forks locally and even downloading of all public repos without forking which is clearly not "viewing" nor "forking" but "copying" (an activity that is restricted by the default copyright and not actually granted by their TOS); so one should also be wary of unspecified caveats such as this.
**Ask the maintainers nicely to add a license.** Unless the software includes strong indications to the contrary, lack of a license is probably an oversight. If the software is hosted on a site like GitHub, open an issue requesting a license and include a link to this site, or if you're bold and it's fairly obvious what license is most appropriate, open a pull request to add a license.
**Don't use the software.** Find or create an alternative that is under an open source license.
**Negotiate a private license.** Bring your lawyer.
