2

I am confused when it comes to the MIT licenses. If I create a project and put it under the MIT licenses and open source it. Can someone just take my project and turn it into something else and sell it? I have read the licenses like 20 times and I'm still confused.

Or if I find some code that is under the MIT licenses and I want to implement it in my project. Can I sell my project on the market? With that code in it?

gnat
  • 21,442
  • 29
  • 112
  • 288
afafaf
  • 21
  • 2

1 Answers1

4

MIT is a permissive license, apart from a few details about copyright and warranty representations. It has three parts:

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

...which means that anyone can do anything that they want to with the software and cannot restrict others from doing the same, including incorporating your code into another project and selling it.

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software

...which means that, if you use MIT-licensed code in another program, you have to say so.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO BLAH BLAH BLAH...

... which means that nobody is responsible in any way for how well the software works, or anything that happens as a result of using of the software.

Robert Harvey
  • 198,589
  • 55
  • 464
  • 673
  • You don't strictly have to tell people the *your* software is MIT licensed. You can always make unwritten exceptions for yourself. But if you use *other people's* MIT licensed software as part of your project, you have to keep their copyright notice. I think that sentence is a little misleading but apart from that, I think this answer pretty much nails it. – 5gon12eder Oct 08 '15 at 06:48
  • @5gon12eder: Eh, I see the pedantry that you're pointing out there, but if you don't tell people that it is MIT licensed, then... how are they going to know it is MIT licensed? – Robert Harvey Oct 08 '15 at 15:18
  • Sure, it's always good to be explicit about the license. I think the edited answer is very clear now. – 5gon12eder Oct 09 '15 at 10:32