Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
---|---|
SPDX identifier | MIT (see list for more)[1] |
Debian FSG compatible | Yes[2] |
FSF approved | Yes[3][4] |
OSI approved | Yes[5] |
GPL compatible | Yes[3][4] |
Copyleft | No[3][4] |
Linking from code with a different licence | Yes |
The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)[6] in the late 1980s.[7] As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility.[8][9]
Unlike copyleft software licenses, the MIT License also permits reuse within proprietary software, provided that all copies of the software or its substantial portions include a copy of the terms of the MIT License and also a copyright notice.[9][10] In 2015, the MIT License was the most popular software license on GitHub.[11]
Notable projects that use the MIT License include the X Window System, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Lua, jQuery, .NET, Angular, and React.
SPDX License List
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).This page presents the opinion of some debian-legal contributors on how certain licenses follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). ... Licenses currently found in Debian main include: ... Expat/MIT-style licenses ...
This is a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. It is sometimes ambiguously referred to as the MIT License.
This is a lax permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. ... This license is sometimes called the MIT license, but that term is misleading, since MIT has used many licenses for software.
The following licenses have been approved by the OSI. ... MIT License (MIT) ...
The date? The best single answer is probably 1987. But the complete story is more complicated and even a little mysterious. [...] Precursors from 1985. The X Consortium or X11 License variant from 1987. Or the Expat License from 1998 or 1999.
Permissive licensing simplifies things One reason the business world, and more and more developers [...], favor permissive licenses is in the simplicity of reuse. The license usually only pertains to the source code that is licensed and makes no attempt to infer any conditions upon any other component, and because of this there is no need to define what constitutes a derived work. I have also never seen a license compatibility chart for permissive licenses; it seems that they are all compatible.
The licences for distributing free or open source software (FOSS) are divided in two families: permissive and copyleft. Permissive licences (BSD, MIT, X11, Apache, Zope) are generally compatible and interoperable with most other licences, tolerating to merge, combine or improve the covered code and to re-distribute it under many licences (including non-free or "proprietary").
github2015
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).