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expansion/clarification of non-license permissions

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I made some suggestions to this documentation today because I have been wondering about these ambiguities for years and am recently, trying to convince a repo maintainer to add a license to his repo which has over 1000 regular users; but this document (even the section: "Ask the maintainers nicely to add a license") offers nothing convincing to that end.  In fact, it is barely self-consistent, and the GitHub TOS is so terse on the topic that it is not at all clear what this document implies specifically for GitHub users.

The one paragraph states that GitHub public repos are forkable (and actually download-able) regardless of the license or lack thereof.  Then the very next paragraph states that without a license users may not use the material in ANY way.  This avoids blatant contradiction only by omitting that, strictly speaking, without a license the rights do not exist to copy or fork either.

I hope this edit will serve to inform users until perhaps GitHub more clearly defines the limits of the permissions granted in section F1 of the TOS.  Until then, I hope that the drafters of the GitHub TOS would read this PR mindfully and note that it raises some important issues.
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bill auger 2016-05-31 08:28:32 -04:00
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no-license.md
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@ -20,11 +20,13 @@ You don't have to do anything to not offer a license, though including a copyrig
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) by which you allow others to view and fork your repository.
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.
## For users
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. Your options:
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.
Your options:
**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.