ItsDrike
Hi, I noticed that your repository doesn't have a license, yet many people are forking it and contributing to it, this is actually a pretty big issue. ## Why are licenses important Whenever you publish essentially anything, in this case some code or static content created by you, you automatically gain copyright over that content. This copyright is respected in most developed countries and it imposes big legal restrictions on the content in this repository. Essentially, this means that while you decided to make your software source-available, it is not "open-sourced", because it doesn't have an open source license. This means that while you as the copyright owner allowed others to look at your source, you did not give legal permission to re-use this code or to alter it in any way. This means that everybody who has forked your repository is actually legally breaking the copyright law. You should really consider adding an open sourced (ideally an [FSF approved](https://software.fandom.com/wiki/List:FSF_approved_software_licenses)) license. Doing this will not affect your copyright over the code, it just gives everyone some additional permissions that wouldn't be there without it, a license like this is the only thing that allows others to make derivative projects (projects based on your code), or utilize parts of your code in other places. ## License types Learning about different licenses may be a bit confusing at first, and i would suggest you do your own research. I will describe some basic categories of these licenses and what they mean, but this is NOT a legal advice and again, you should always to your own research. Don't just blindly trust some random guy on the internet. ### Copy-Left licenses These licenses allow others to use your code and built upon it, but they require the use of the same license. This essentially enforces the code to always stay open-sourced as it explicitly forbids sublicensing under any non-copatible license (i.e. a license with different terms). Most notably, this include the GPL licenses. ### Permissive licenses Permissive licenses give your contributors a lot more freedom because they allow sublicensing. They usually only require stating the original source of the code. This means that if you would decide to use a permissive license, anyone would be able to make a close-sourced project based on your code and even sell it, as long as there is a mention that some parts of this code-base were utilized in it. (If that license requires it) Most notably, this includes the MIT license and the Apache 2.0 License, another popular set of licenses are the BSD licenses, most notably the BSD 2-Clause license. ### Public domain licenses There are also so called public domain licenses, these licenses are actually a subtype of permissive licenses, however when we talk about permissive licenses, we generally don't really refer to the public domain ones, which is why I separated this category as it is a bit special. Public domain licenses essentially strip the copyright away and essentially it gives everybody rights to do pretty much anything with the code. They don't require any mentions of the original source for that code and obviously they allow sublicensing. These licenses dont actually "remove" your copyright over that code, they just allow anyome to do anything with the project, essentially disregarding the copyright alltogether. Most notably, this includes the Unlicense license. ## Picking your license While you aren't required to add a license of any kind, it is a bit weird to have a popular project such as this with a lot of forks without any license. At the moment, all of the contributors are actually breaking the copyright law which really isn't ideal. Even though I'm sure you don't have the intention to sue these people, you technically could even though they just wanted to contribute to your project. That's a bit unexpected for the contributors and it could discourage many people from contributing to or even using this project. **Some great websites;** - There is a page from GitHub that may help you pick the correct license for your program: <https://choosealicense.com/>. - You can also check out their post about licensing [here](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/licensing-a-repository). - Another wonderful site you should check out is <https://tldrlegal.com>, it can quickly show you the details about what license requires from others when they use your code, and what rights it gives them. **Limitations:** While you can license your code under any license whatsoever, if your code is utilizing some copy-left licensed parts (whether by a library-like dependency or directly by having bits of code written by others with that license), you will need to respect the terms of that license and license your code accordingly. This means that if you have a copy-left licensed dependency that you're utilizing in your project, you will need to adhere to it's terms or remove that dependency, otherwise you, as the owner of that code are yourself violating the copyright law by doing something prohibited by copyright and not explicitly allowed by the license of the software you depend on.