Monday 7 September 2009

MIT License

The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), used by the MIT X Consortium.

It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software on the condition that the license is distributed with that software. The license is also GPL-compatible, meaning that the GPL permits combination and redistribution with software that uses the MIT License.

According to the Free Software Foundation, the MIT License is more accurately called the X11 license, since MIT has used many licenses for software and the license was first drafted for the X Window System.

Software packages that use the MIT License include Expat, PuTTY, the Mono development platform class libraries, Ruby on Rails, Lua 5.0 onwards and the X Window System, for which the license was written.

Some software packages dual license their products under the MIT License, such as the JavaScript library jQuery, which is licensed under both the MIT and GNU General Public License licenses.

The license is as follows:
Copyright (c)  

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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