If you take a close look at my GitHub Profile you will notice that I primarily license my projects with the UNLICENSE. It’s contains the following statement:
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
Full text here
What does that mean? It means: This is completely free, I don’t care what you do
Many people don’t want others to sell their work or claim ownership. I personally chose to not care about that, as all of the projects i do in my free time are made primarily for fun and learning. The few that aren’t get a different license.
But if I don’t care, why have a license? Because code without a license IS NOT FREE!
As explained here:
Code without an explicit license is protected by copyright and is by default All Rights Reserved. The person or people who wrote the code are protected as such. Any time you’re using software you didn’t write, licensing should be considered and abided.
Well if you know licensing it makes sense. You need to actively disown your code to make it completely free. It’s not in the public domain just because you released it in the public. Even worse, when using no license, the copyright might behave different depending where you and someone allegedly breaking it lives. It differs from country to country.
Knowing that I chose the UNLICENSE for all my projects I can use it on. Because I now know enough about licenses that I understand I don’t want to know anything more.
Just my 2 cents.