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I saw repository on GitHub where someone had LICENSE file as below:

Copyright year name

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

I have read that Apache2.0 license must be copied into LICENSE file, and then the NOTICE file will contain exactly that what I showed above.

If the license was invalid at first time, then can someone say "your code at some moment wasn't licensed, so I created repo with your code and added copyright on my name"? And if license was fixed, then does still someone could do it, because "law is not retroactive"? If yes, what this poor man should do to have copyrights?

Sneftel
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Szyszka947
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1 Answers1

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It doesn't work like that!

If the code is not properly licensed, you can not acquire a license for it. If you don't have a license, you can not use it. Usage without a license is copyright infringement and not allowed: the copyright is with the author, and only the author may make derivates or copies or allow them to be made by licensing it.

You do not gain copyright by fixing a licensing error - in fact, you commit copyright infringement if you do not have a license, and providing wrong copyright management information is illegal under 17 USC 1202

Trish
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