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Suppose I have a private project with 100 commits. I don't add a software license until the 101st commit. If I make the project open source, does that mean all first 100 commits are unbound by the software license in the 101st commit?
Should the project be rebased when a license is added?
The licence applies when you publish the work. So if you publish after the commit then it covers all of the commits.
If you publish before you add the licence, then there is no licence for anyone to use your copywrited work until you publish a version under a licence of some kind.
The problem you are thinking of occurs when a project is published under one licence and then changes to another.
In that case people who have downloaded the work under the old licence are still on that licence. With open source licences this often means they can republish the work under the same licence.
You are correct that the license is valid from the time it is applied. That means that the previous commits are defaulting to copyright which means no one has the right to use them for any purpose.
If it is important to you that others can use the old versions you could rebase.
