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Now, something to recognize is that not all code can be licensed. There's something called the threshold of originality. In the United States, you can only copyright something that has a "minimal degree of creativity". A lot of code samples or code snippets or MVCEs won't meet this threshold of originality. However, larger pieces of code will. So now, you have a large piece of code that took creativity to write posted on a Stack Exchange site (as part of a question or an answer). What now?

Now, something to recognize is that not all code can be licensed. There's something called the threshold of originality. In the United States, you can only copyright something that has a "minimal degree of creativity". A lot of code samples or code snippets or MVCEs won't meet this threshold of originality. However, larger pieces of code will. So now, you have a large piece of code that took creativity to write posted on a Stack Exchange site (as part of a question or an answer). What now?

Today, it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Yes, that's a copyleft license. It's important to recognize that Creative Commons says that their licenses should not be used for software source code or binaries, but it is in this instance. This question on the Open Source Stack Exchange has a lot more detail about the CC licenses and software. There are two problems with the license itself: it does not provide patent protections (like Apache or GPLv3, but in the same position as some other FSF and OSI approved free software licenses) and it does not address the distribution of binary files versus source files.

Today, it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Yes, that's a copyleft license. It's important to recognize that Creative Commons says that their licenses should not be used for software source code or binaries, but it is in this instance. This question on the Open Source Stack Exchange has a lot more detail about the CC licenses and software. There are two problems with the license itself: it does not provide patent protections (like Apache or GPLv3, but in the same position as some other FSF and OSI approved free software licenses) and it does not address the distribution of binary files versus source files.

Today, it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Yes, that's a copyleft license. It's important to recognize that Creative Commons says that their licenses should not be used for software source code or binaries, but it is in this instance. There are two problems with the license itself: it does not provide patent protections (like Apache or GPLv3, but in the same position as some other FSF and OSI approved free software licenses) and it does not address the distribution of binary files versus source files.

Today, it's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Yes, that's a copyleft license. It's important to recognize that Creative Commons says that their licenses should not be used for software source code or binaries, but it is in this instance. This question on the Open Source Stack Exchange has a lot more detail about the CC licenses and software. There are two problems with the license itself: it does not provide patent protections (like Apache or GPLv3, but in the same position as some other FSF and OSI approved free software licenses) and it does not address the distribution of binary files versus source files.