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MIT Licence
The MIT Licence is the epitome of simplicity. It is extremely short and permits almost everything, provided the copyright notice is retained.
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. Over 90% of modern npm or Ruby packages use MIT. It is the default licence of 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.