Mailing lists' content license (e.g. Apache mailing lists)

Question

There are lots of different mailing lists for different software projects (e.g. Apache mailing lists) and quite often some piece of code is sent to those lists.

Are there some general licensing rules for the content posted to those lists? I looked for the terms of Apache lists but couldn't find any.

If I find some code which I need to use in my project, what is the legal way to do it (send an e-mail to the author, attach a link to the post or ...)?

Answer 1

It will depend on the mailing list. If no license is specified (by the list or the author), then you can assume that the code is copyrighted. Usually if the code is simple, I wouldn't mind using it... if it's a huge chunk of your application, double check with the author.