Open source contribution

Stage 1 · Lesson 2 of 7

What an open source licence does

How open source works

Code with no licence is not . By default, copyright law means nobody may copy, change or share someone's code, even when it sits in a public GitHub . An is a legal note that grants those rights, under some conditions.

The keeps the list of approved licences. Most projects use one of a handful: MIT, Apache 2.0, the BSD licences, GPL, LGPL and MPL. You find the licence in a LICENSE file at the root (top folder) of the repository, and in the , the details published with the package.

It matters to you as a contributor because it sets the terms for your own code. When you contribute, you usually agree to license your change the same way.

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  • Choose a License

    Plain-language comparison of MIT, Apache and GPL: what each lets you do

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