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I have code using a third party library, QrCode.Net, in the form of a dll file.

The library is licensed under the MIT License.

Do I have to include the license in my project if I did not use or modify the source code?

Full license text:

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2011 George Mamaladze

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.

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    Will it hurt your karma if you do? Consulting with the lawyer is the other way.
    – SChepurin
    Commented Feb 23, 2013 at 14:21

2 Answers 2

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If you distribute the QrCode.Net DLL as part of your project, then yes, you have to distribute the licence text along with it.

If you use the QrCode.Net DLL, but you don't distribute it (instead, you tell your users to get it from somewhere else, then you don't have to include the MIT licence in your project, as you are not distributing anything uder it (assuming your code uses a different licence).

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  • I don't think this is correct. See the other answer from Collin Grady. The license does not provide an exception if you don't distribute it.
    – jbyler
    Commented Aug 25, 2017 at 17:00
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

This bit is pretty clear. You must include this if you include the library. There are no exceptions.

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