How do they "get burned" by that? Not having a license means you don't get to use it and are violating their copyright if you do so (possibly except the things specified in Github ToS: look at the code on github)
The default is that you don't have rights to code unless they are explicitly given to you. The Github ToS do specify some rights that are granted through uploading to GH, but they don't constitute any usual license, nor one that makes any of it usable to you.
