A question for the masses about take home coding challenges. Some background: I've heard of companies using submitted code for their real world problems, getting some nice free work out of people. I'm getting ready to submit one of these challenges to a prospective employer, and was considering putting a license on it, probably AGPL. While it doesn't stop them from just ignoring the license, at least they have to explicitly do so which is better than nothing in my book. I'm curious if anyone has done this or has any thoughts on this topic

Might be worth being up-front with them about it. “Either pay me for this work, or accept the license I attach to it.”

I like the subtle approach of attaching a license. Being somewhat accusatory during a job interview is not ideal, assuming you actually want to the job.

You’re right that my phrasing is probably too aggressive but, at the same time, I can see some prospective employers viewing quietly attaching a license as passive-aggressive. Maybe, “This appears to be work that will benefit your company, which I am, of course, happy to do, but I would like to discuss the option of either compensation for that work or having the AGPL attached to it.”

I wouldn't put too much thought behind it - there are infinite "maybe"s. Attaching a license sounds like a nice approach to me. If a company wanted to pay for the work in the first place, they should've discussed it in advance and not after the fact.

Thanks for the comments. I went with putting the AGPLv3 license in the LICENSE file, and in the readme where it notes that it is released under AGPLv3, that commercial license is available upon request.