Massimiliano Falcinelli’s Post

Over 80% of GitHub repositories have no license. Most developers don't realize what that means. Here's the uncomfortable truth: if code on GitHub has no license, you cannot legally use it. Not copy it. Not modify it. Not include it in your project. Default copyright law applies, and that means "all rights reserved." Public does not mean open source. This is one of the biggest blind spots in software development. Developers fork repos, copy snippets, and import dependencies every day assuming that if it's on GitHub, it's fair game. It's not. And it gets worse: - 50% of repositories don't fully declare all licenses found in their code - 10% of those have permissive vs copyleft mismatches hiding in dependencies - GitHub's Terms of Service let you view and fork, but that's it, no permission to use the code in your projects - Over 50% of NuGet packages have unclassifiable licenses The licensing landscape is also shifting fast. The industry moved from copyleft-dominant to permissive-dominant between 2014-2017. Permissive licenses peaked at 82% in 2022 but have dropped to 73% in 2025, with early signs that the pendulum may swing back toward copyleft. Meanwhile, major projects like Redis, HashiCorp, and Elasticsearch switched to source-available licenses, then some reversed course back to AGPL. The rules keep changing. What every developer should do: 1. Always add a license to your repos. Takes 30 seconds at choosealicense.com 2. Audit your dependencies for license conflicts before shipping 3. Never assume public code is free to use 4. If you're a company, get your legal team involved in your open source policy Open source became so successful that we forgot what made it work: the licenses. Sources: https://lnkd.in/eqmfdpbW https://lnkd.in/enb6Qyxy https://lnkd.in/eCjHPnWh #OpenSource #GitHub #SoftwareLicensing #DeveloperTools #SoftwareEngineering #LegalTech

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