No, this is not correct at all! You keep limiting yourself to the terms “open source” and “closed source”.

Any code you create, you own by copyright. Even if it is public on GitHub, you’re still the lone copyright owner and no one is legally allowed to do with it what isn’t allowed by a license.

Projects on GitHub without an open source license are only “functionally open source” to the same extent that pirated games are “functionally free”.

The industry takes advantage of open source projects that have permissive licenses. This is an important distinction.

If you didn’t release your code with a permissive license (or even with a license at all), you have rights that protect you and your code. The only issue is that copyright infringement can often be hard to prove if you didn’t plan ahead for it.

I’m seeing this misconception in a lot of places.

Just because something is on GitHub, doesn’t mean it’s open source. It doesn’t automatically grant permission to share either.

I’m noticing this misconception in a lot of places.

Just because something is on GitHub, doesn’t mean it’s open source.