MIT Licence

The MIT Licence is the epitome of simplicity. It is extremely short and permits almost everything, provided the copyright notice is retained.

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Core concept

Permissive without copyleft: there are no restrictions on commercial use or combination with proprietary code. However, the licence contains no explicit patent grant (unlike Apache 2.0).

Assessment

• For organisations: Completely unproblematic. MIT is one of the most widely used permissive licences in the modern web.
• For OSS authors: Minimal friction for users, resulting in very rapid adoption. However, it offers no protection whatsoever against commercial exploitation by third parties.

Related topics

• Apache 2.0, the permissive licence context for MIT.
• BSD Licences, the permissive licence comparison for MIT.