Should every piece of code put online have a licence with it, or should it explicitly mentioned that it is in the public domain?
I’m writing a simple python script that will take a project euler problem number and save a file with the question text as comment. As I was creating the directory and initializing git I added a licence file, which got me thinking is it even necessary to put a licence for something so simple.
So, should every project no matter how trivial have it’s licence explicitly mentioned or is it just overkill to put a licence with such small scripts? What is the recommended practice here?
I would recommend including a license. It may seem to be unnecessary overhead and not every piece of code is a patent-ridden court case in the making but many people and organizations, large companies in particular, are very careful about other source that they use. Even if is just a quick cut and paste of the BSD or MIT licenses (two short, very open licenses), it just clarifies the author’s intentions.
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