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Timeline for Meaning of MIT license

Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5

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Aug 23, 2020 at 5:13 comment added flow2k See also softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/178493/270224.
Aug 23, 2020 at 5:13 comment added flow2k I agree - advice like "read some legal document" is predicated on the reader having some legalese foundation, which shouldn't be assumed. Here, the paragraph The above ... shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software means: this notice should simply be included in one's proprietary software, but it doesn't apply to the proprietary software itself. It's like an advertisement to the open source component. Essentially saying "Hey in my closed source commercial software, I used OpenAwesome, which is MIT-licensed (so you can grab a copy of OpenAwesome and use it too)"
Jun 17, 2016 at 22:45 comment added BeeOnRope You ask that people read the license, but nowhere do I see support for your point (3) that the license rights only transitively extend to people receiving source copies of the software, rather than binary copies. In fact, there is no distinction at all between "source" and "binary" at all in the license. Furthermore, software is commonly understood as meaning both the source and binary forms when considering the notice clause, so it be very odd for it to have the opposite meaning elsewhere in the license.
Sep 3, 2014 at 3:13 history migrated from stackoverflow.com (revisions)
Aug 12, 2013 at 16:33 comment added William Payne Even as a native speaker, I found it difficult to understand. If the permission notice has to be included in all copies of the software, and if compiled binaries are still "copies of the software", then seemingly the permission notice has to be included with your compiled binaries. If you are including the permission notice, then seemingly you are giving recipients permission to copy "the software" -- i.e. both the MIT-licensed library software and your own software together. I know that this is not the intent of the license ... but still, it is confusing to the literal minded such as myself.
Jul 7, 2013 at 17:37 comment added pauluss86 As a non-native English speaker, I've been confused by the MIT license as well. The confusion stems from the fact that the license talks about the 'Software' to which the license applies. So if I link to MIT-licensed 'Software' and distribute a derivative + MIT license (mandatory) then this implies that the derivative would become the 'Software' according to the license. To be clear: there is no mention of source code\binary distribution anywhere, just 'Software'.
Apr 12, 2009 at 5:43 vote accept CommunityBot
Apr 2, 2009 at 15:19 comment added dwc Jox, I pasted the ENTIRE license above so you can see for yourself. BSD/MIT/ISC style licensed software have been included in Mac OS, Windows, etc... You cannot remove the license/copyright, but you can do pretty much anything else. It's not viral.
Apr 2, 2009 at 7:59 comment added Jox Maybe the thing he wanted to ask was weather he can license his product under some commercial license (is MIT license copyleft?)?
Apr 1, 2009 at 18:32 comment added Ben Blank I agree, read the license, it's short: opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html
Apr 1, 2009 at 18:30 history answered dwc CC BY-SA 2.5