> Some of that is intentional, some is not.

Likewise, most of it is not intentional and users are just not aware of it. If they do not wish to include a license, they can just close the issue or put a copyright information in the README/wiki.

> Please don't spam everyone who doesn't agree with you. I hope Github bans this bot.

I respect those who don't agree with me. There are a lot of projects that have added licenses already [1] and none have said that they do not want to include licenses (yet).

Also, this is not spam. The bot doesn't scan ALL of the repositories. It only scans repos with 1 to 5 stars. The logic being, if some people "like" it, then it could be a generic project that is reusable. If a lot of people like it then it probably already has a license.

Have a great day!

[1] https://github.com/karan/add-a-license-please/wiki

I agree with sjs382 - I don't think it's your place to be spamming repos telling them to add a licence.

Ok. Who's is it then?

Let me start out by saying that I think opening an issue isn't all that spammy to me. It's certainly better than emailing directly, although it still generates an email, so it's still "kinda spammy" IMHO.

From a philosophical standpoint, I'd say it's no one's place to be automated cold calling (cold issuing?) other developers to explicitly license their software. If there is no explicit license, the implicit copyright still exists. GitHub is really the only party that would have an understandable role in these kinds of warnings/requests.

Here's a good SX post on the topic: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148165

If it's anybody's job, it's a user of the project who requires/desires a license for some reason.

Going back to other comments, many people store dotfiles on GitHub which aren't likely to have many stars and which would be entirely reasonable to not have a license for.

Moreover, if this bot ever opened an issue on one of my repos for this, I'd flat-out report you to GitHub for harassment if they didn't already beat me to it.

If you want to create a website calling for people to add licenses to their projects and start a movement that way, great. Just tell me where to sign up for the cause. But this is just plain wrong.

I don't think you really understand how this bot works.

Really? What makes you say that besides the fact that I said something you don't like?

Does it or does it not open unsolicited issues on GitHub repositories automatically?

Seems to me like that's exactly what it does. If it does, this is the epitome of spam despite your claim otherwise. Your attitude and apparent disbelief that this would be unwanted and disliked by people is baffling to me. Just look at most comments so far that have felt the same way.

> Does it or does it not open unsolicited issues on GitHub repositories automatically?

Having a publicly exposed issue tracker is soliciting issues. So, except perhaps by exploiting a security flaw related to private repositories, I don't see how it is possible to open unsolicited issues on Github, automatically or otherwise.

If you disagree with the issue, you close it. I don't see what the problem is.

Is your response to spam "If you don't want the spam, delete it. I don't see what the problem is."?

Would it be kosher if I created a bot that created issues for all english-language projects, asking that they be translated to esperanto? No, it wouldn't—it would just be unnecessary spam.

I think he's referring to the fact that it won't create issues for dotfies repos, because (presumably) people won't be starring them.

I'm not sure why he thinks it's okay to spam repos with stars, as long as he avoids the ones without stars though?

> Does it or does it not open unsolicited issues on GitHub repositories automatically?

Aren't all issues unsolicited? The point of creating an issue is to somehow improve the project. If the author overlooked adding a license file, the issue this bot creates will do that. If they really did not mean to add a license, they say so and close the issue. The bot never asks them more than once.

As for people's response, every project owner that has received issues through the bot have either:

- closed the issue without taking any action - added a license file and thanked the bot

Nobody's.

Feel free to ask individual repos that you may want to use code from, but unsolicited, automated messaging like this is spam.

Yeah totally. Pretty much every time I have a code idea, I create a new github repo. If someone went through and did pull requests on every single one of those to add a license, it would probably do nothing but piss me off and convince me to spend time figuring out how to report the account. That being said if an actual individual developer sent me a pull request/email/tweet/whatever asking for a license, I can promise you I'd be sitting there on my phone scrambling to get a license on there.

If GitHub wanted all the repos on GitHub to have licenses, they would require it, or create a policy where all repos with no licenses automatically meet a minimum licensing requirement.

> did pull requests

Except this bot doesn't create PR's.

I agree - it's the automated aspect of it that I feel uncomfortable with.

Why does it have to be anybody's?