> one of the leading complaints being that it takes a lax approach to software licensing
I never understood this criticism. There's plenty of software I haven't bought a license for. I don't feel that just because somebody shares their code or archives it in public that I'm entitled to a free license.
That said, I've been approached on Github about licensing my code and I'm happy to grant one. For the most part, however, I just dump code to Github because it's a convenient way to backup and dealing with licenses just creates friction. I'd rather know that somebody out there explicitly wants the code before dealing with it.
But if somebody posts code on a website where most of the public content is under free licenses and the TOS explicitly dictates that you grant certain licenses to other users for free, I think we can all have a reasonable expectation that the code in question will also be under a free license. And if the expectation is broken without a clear indicator, that's a recipe for confusion.
> By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.
Unfortunately, the TOS doesn't provide a clear legal definition of fork. Does it go beyond clicking the fork button and copying the repo across Github servers? Does it including cloning the repo to a local disk? Or running the code? Or maintaining a derivative project?
I never understood this criticism. There's plenty of software I haven't bought a license for. I don't feel that just because somebody shares their code or archives it in public that I'm entitled to a free license.
That said, I've been approached on Github about licensing my code and I'm happy to grant one. For the most part, however, I just dump code to Github because it's a convenient way to backup and dealing with licenses just creates friction. I'd rather know that somebody out there explicitly wants the code before dealing with it.