Re: most liberal license
Harald Geyer <Harald.Geyer@gmx.at> writes:
>> > * Even worse, you are required to include the permission notice, thus
>> > it is half way towards copyleft. (I.e. it doesn't affect other
>> > software, but still you can't sell it in a proprietary way.)
>>
>> You can take MIT-licensed software and sell it to people without providing
>> source, and you don't have to place your modifications under the same
>> license; you can place them under a heavily restrictive EULA. If that's
>> not "selling in a proprietary way", could you please explain what you
>> mean by that?
>
> It says you have to include the permission notice in any "substantial
> portions of the Software" no matter if source or binary only.
> I think this make merging the Software into some proprietary product
> quite difficult.
Software under that license is distributed as part of Windows XP.
Clearly it's not insurmountable. That permission notice applies only
to the code covered by the licensor's copyright, not to other works
merged with it.
> But even worse is the issue with your statement below:
>
>> (You can never take someone else's work, place restrictions on it and
>> sell it. Nobody but the copyright holder has the ability to do that;
>> if a work is in the public domain, nobody can. You can only place
>> restrictions on your modifications, which the MIT license allows you to
>> do.)
>
> Perhaps you can't claim copyright of a copy of something you are not
> the copyright holder, because simply copying is no intellectual work
> at all. But proprietary software is often not only restricted by
> copyright but by an EULA which actually is a contract.
>
> By such a contract you can restrict copying of something you actually
> are not the copyright holder. But I don't see how you could do this
> while still including the permission notice.
Sure you can. The permission notice is included. But I'll pet this
cat here for you if you agree not to exercise it.
>> The MIT license is in no way a copyleft.
>
> Half way is no way, isn't it? ;)
No. It really is just a public license. You're objecting to the
parts which make it such -- the fact that the license to the MIT
licensed code is extended to anyone who receives it. But that's not a
copyleft, just your inability to mess with the license granted by MIT.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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