Ask any developer where to turn for access to the latest software code for open source projects, and you’ll likely be directed to GitHub—one of the largest providers of open source code online.
GitHub has long been a fantastic platform for developers to connect, collaborate, and share code. However, until a few years back, the site faced a challenge. While sharing code was simple for developers, locating the appropriate software license was a lot tougher. As a result, most downloads on GitHub occurred without the essential software license.
Why was this an issue? A software license is a key part of any open source project. This document confirms a developer as the original creator and owner of the code and grants specific permissions on how others can use it. There are various software license options available, including the General Public License, or GNU, which permits the use of the software as long as the resulting code is also shared back with the same license (copyleft license). Other common licenses include the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which allows the use of libraries without requiring the source code to be shared (weak copyleft), and permissive licenses like MIT and Apache.
While licenses are not required for open source projects, developers are strongly encouraged to use them as, without one, open source code that is placed into the public domain via a service like GitHub is essentially unusable by anyone else.
In July 2013, GitHub addressed this problem by releasing a tool called choosealicense.com that makes it simple for developers to pick a software license for their code, and to understand how their code can be used. And just recently, GitHub released new data which shows that the service is accomplishing its intended task of increasing open source license usage with developers. In fact, license usage has increased by at least 20 percent since the tool was released, indicating that a greater number of developers are now using it.