The license is what makes it possible to legally distribute the source code, or use it in other stuff.
Without that, the source code is still legally considered proprietary and the author could sue you if you distribute it to other people, or modify it and distribute modified versions. Even if they made it publicly available!
I’ve licensed some stuff under CC0 in the past since it makes it no-friction for individuals, but “embrace, extend, extinguish” is beyond trivialized with licenses like CC0. Licenses like the GPLv3 and CC BY-SA at least maintain some responsibility that corporate actors legally need to meet; they are, to me, better in cases of individuals publishing works, and I see licenses like MIT as basically scabbing the FOSS ecosystem in favor of letting corporations do whatever they want. (I moreso agree with public domain for things like government works.)
Yeah, a lot of my stuff is public domain actually! (I like the Unlicense! it’s public domain + a fallback “do anything, no conditions” license because some jurisdictions are weird about the whole concept of public domain stuff.)
The license is what makes it possible to legally distribute the source code, or use it in other stuff.
Without that, the source code is still legally considered proprietary and the author could sue you if you distribute it to other people, or modify it and distribute modified versions. Even if they made it publicly available!
– Frost
You could just say ‘Public Domain’ but then you have the issues around privatisation.
I’ve licensed some stuff under CC0 in the past since it makes it no-friction for individuals, but “embrace, extend, extinguish” is beyond trivialized with licenses like CC0. Licenses like the GPLv3 and CC BY-SA at least maintain some responsibility that corporate actors legally need to meet; they are, to me, better in cases of individuals publishing works, and I see licenses like MIT as basically scabbing the FOSS ecosystem in favor of letting corporations do whatever they want. (I moreso agree with public domain for things like government works.)
Yeah, a lot of my stuff is public domain actually! (I like the Unlicense! it’s public domain + a fallback “do anything, no conditions” license because some jurisdictions are weird about the whole concept of public domain stuff.)