Re: Experience with convincing people to DFSGize their licenses?

[Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>]

Humberto Massa <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br> writes:

> I think he meant X11 (the new, problematic one) does not equals MIT or
> 2-clause BSD anymore; "MIT/X11" seems to imply that. I agree. MIT/X
> would be ok, as in "the MIT version of the X system license" ugh. MIT is
> better (and shorter).

I would be leery of calling it the MIT license, since MIT has other
licenses that aren't quite the same.  For example, the MIT Kerberos
license, copied below:

    Copyright (C) 1985-2004 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    All rights reserved.

    Export of this software from the United States of America may require
    a specific license from the United States Government.  It is the
    responsibility of any person or organization contemplating export to
    obtain such a license before exporting.

    WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to use, copy, modify, and
    distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and
    without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
    notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
    this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that
    the name of M.I.T. not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
    to distribution of the software without specific, written prior
    permission.  Furthermore if you modify this software you must label
    your software as modified software and not distribute it in such a
    fashion that it might be confused with the original MIT software.
    M.I.T. makes no representations about the suitability of this software
    for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or implied
    warranty.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
    WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Note the "label your software as modified software" bit which are not part
of what people mean when they say "MIT/X license."  Note also the
confusing "without fee" bit, which is intended to be read as "you will not
be charged any fee for using, copying, modifying, and distributing this
software" rather than "you may not charge a fee for this software," but
which is an endless source of confusion.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>