Licence file

[B33low]

Hello,
I think adding a licence file would be useful as the actual licence of the project is a bit ambiguous (it is by default not possible legally to use any of the code in the cheatsheet).
Is it on purpose ?

Thank you

[gto76]

According to GitHub Terms of Service, section D, paragraph 5:

• All users of GitHub can use my content through the GitHub Service and reproduce it solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).
• I do not grant any further rights because I did not adopt a license.

I am not really certain what all this means exactly, but I will not grant any more rights than I already did by putting this on GitHub.

[B33low]

Thanks for your response !
What you just cited allow user to fork your repository but not to modify it nor to legally use code snippets written inside of it.

A very concrete use case where this could be a problem is in the case where you suddenly stop contributing to this repo, no one will be legally in right to fork it to continue expend it.
Looking at the quality of the cheatsheet it would be sad to be in this situation.
Also this is really shady if you have the copyright on the code that has been pushed by the pr or if the code is still owned by the specific individual contributor.
This would prevent anyone legally from modifying their snippets and than to publish the cheatsheet again.

I don't know if it is intentionnal or not, but if it is not I would higlhy advase you to look for licence that would satisfy your exigence around right granted to the cheatsheet user.

Here some example for you:

• MIT: Anyone can do anything with it, use it anywhere. You can also add some specific mention if you find it too permissive.

• BSD3:

1. Everyone can legally create the pdf from the tools in the repo
2. Everyone is able to study (read and fork)
3. Distribute the cheatsheet (you can add to this that you want everyone to cite you for exemple)
4. Distribute the modified cheatsheet (continue the fork)

With every of the two cited licences you will still have the copyright.
The important point of the BSD3 is that no one will be able to restrict right for future distribution. (No one will be able to fork and to use it in proprietary soft).
This is the really difference with MIT.

I hope it would be useful, I would love to see this project continue to exist. We have great tools in our hand for protecting our opensource jobs/contributions !

[gto76]

All users of GitHub can use my content through the GitHub Service and reproduce it solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking). I do not grant any further rights.

[harkabeeparolus]

There's an FAQ about this:

• No License | Choose a License

In particular:

If you’re going to accept others’ contributions to your non-licensed project, you may wish to explore adding a contributor agreement to your project with your lawyer so that you maintain copyright permission from contributors, even though you’re not granting the same.

[lodenrogue]

What are the restrictions or allowances for using the cheat sheet? Is the data on the sheet in the public domain? An entity that produces any product retains all rights on the product unless licensed or sold to it's users. If not, without any license, we're not even allowed to use the sheet for personal or informational purposes.