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The MIT License is a license for the use of certain types of computer software. It allows reuse for open source or proprietary software.
Many groups use the MIT license for their own software, such as expat, MetaKit, XFree86, and (most famously) the X Window System.
Text of the license
- Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
- Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
- The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software.
- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Uses of the MIT License
Because the MIT License is not copyrighted, other groups can elect to modify the MIT License to suit their own needs. For
example, the Free Software Foundation uses a
license identical to the MIT License for its ncurses library, except for the addition
of this text:
- Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise
to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization.
Adding this text makes it almost identical in its effects to the BSD
license.
Still other groups prefer to dual-license their products under the MIT license; an example of this is older versions of the cURL library, which allowed you to choose either the Mozilla Public License or the MIT License.
According to the Free Software Foundation's
license list [1] , the MIT license is more accurately called the X11
license, because MIT has many licenses for software. However, the Open Source Initiative refers to it as the MIT License, as do
most others.
Comparison to other licenses
The MIT License is most similar to the 3-clause BSD license, which is
essentially different only in the fact that it contains a notice prohibiting the use of the name of the copyright holder in
promotion. The 4-clause BSD license also includes a clause requiring all advertising of the software to display a notice; the MIT
License has never had this clause. The MIT license, however, more explicitly states the rights given to the end-user, including the right to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell the software.
A 2-clause BSD-style license, found in software such as Apple
Computer's WebCore is, in practicality, the same as the MIT License, as it does
not contain the "promotion" clause.
External Links
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