GitHub Repo Without LICENSE File: All Rights Reserved by Default
A public {{GitHub}} repository with no LICENSE file defaults to "all rights reserved" under copyright law. Despite being visible and downloadable, the code is legally not usable for any purpose.
Posting code publicly on GitHub does not put it in the public domain. Under default copyright law in most jurisdictions, any original work is automatically protected from the moment of creation, with the author holding exclusive rights to copy, modify, distribute, and use it. A GitHub repository without a LICENSE file inherits this default — visitors can view the code and clone the repository, but they have no legal right to actually use it, fork it for derivative works, redistribute it, or run it in any context other than evaluation under fair use. GitHub's own documentation is explicit about this: without a license, the work falls under "exclusive copyright by default," and users have no permission to use, copy, distribute, or modify the software. The repository being public makes the code visible but does not grant any rights. This catches researchers and engineers off guard regularly — a paper accompanies code release, and readers assume the code is usable for replication or building on, when in fact running it in a commercial product or even a derivative academic project is a copyright violation. Resolving the ambiguity requires the maintainer to add a LICENSE file specifying terms. Common choices include MIT License (permissive, minimal restrictions), Apache 2.0 (permissive plus patent grant), GPL (copyleft, requires derivative works to be open-source), and Creative Commons licenses (typically for non-code assets like papers and datasets). A paper's claimed license (often CC BY-NC-SA for the PDF) does not transfer to the code repository — the code needs its own LICENSE file with explicit terms. For users encountering an unlicensed repo, the safe path is to open an issue or email the maintainer requesting a license. Many maintainers simply forgot and will add one quickly. Until then, using the code in any context beyond personal evaluation carries legal risk. The norm of expecting code to be usable just because it accompanies a paper is wrong — code freedom requires an explicit license. See GPL: The Copyleft License That Built Linux and the Free Software Movement for one widely-used licensing model.