Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The MIT License: Layer vs Developer


In an open source class professor have suggested me to read the plain MIT License and then compare my thoughts to the article written by layer with line by line explanation of the license.
I feel like this is going to be an interesting experiment since I Am Not A Layer.

The first thing that I missed reading MIT by myself was a structure of the license. It is quite interesting, because quite a few other licences I saw follow the same structure. And luckily to me, Kyle E. Mitchell, the author of this blog-post did. I think it is important to highlight it here:
  • Header
    • Licence Title
    • Copyright notice
  • Licence grant: "Permission is hereby granted..."
    • Grant scope: "... to deal in the Software..."
    • Conditions: "... subject to ..."
      • Attribution and Notice: "The above ... shall be included ..."
      • Warranty Disclaimer: "The software is provided 'as is'..."
      • Limitation of the Liability: "In no event ..."
Along with the structure Kyle also covered a bit of history which I found extremely interesting, again here is a link for you to read the full article.

Another interesting part was an explanation of Grant scope phrase("to deal in the Software without restriction"), the layer has explained it as "intentionally broad and open-ended". Apparently it gives more freedom for licensee.

To sum it all up, the MIT License grants permission to use and even sell Software and at the same time protects licensors from liability. Still that's one of the most popular and widely used license nowadays.

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