Thankyouthankyouthankyou! This has been one of my longest outstanding gripes with GitHub. By not including any mention of licensing when creating a new public repo, I feel that GitHub was tacitly encouraging the "licenses are for lawyers not hackers" mindset.

For anyone who still doesn't think licenses are a big deal, I would wager that you have never:

a) worked for a company with > $1B in assets

b) worked for a startup that might be acquired by a company with > $1B in assets