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2026

The MIT License

Also known as MIT, MIT License.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
not required
Attribution
required (keep the copyright and license notices)
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Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MIT

Permissions

  • Change license by library convention Library convention: family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing. Replacing the license of the work, or of an adaptation, with another license, or changing its terms.

    Duties

    • Use a compliant license by library convention Library convention: family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing. Choosing a replacement license that stays compliant with the terms of the original license.
  • Charge distribution fee from the text The text says: "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:" Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
  • Commercial use from the text Using the work to generate income, directly or indirectly, for example by selling it or by using it in advertising.
  • Derivative works from the text Distributing an adaptation of the work and making it available to the public.
  • Derive from the text Creating a new work from the work, such as a translation, adaptation or arrangement of it or of a part of it.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Display from the text Showing the work to the public without making a copy the viewer keeps.
  • Distribute from the text Providing copies of the work to the public or to anyone else.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Grant use from the text The text says: "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:" Granting third parties the right to use the work.
  • Modified works from the text Distributing a modified version of the work that does not amount to a new, derivative work.
  • Modify from the text Altering the work, for example by updating it, without creating a new work; an alteration that creates a new work is Derive.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Present from the text Performing the work in public, including by broadcast or other communication to the public.
  • Reproduce from the text Making copies of the work in any form.

Prohibitions

This license states no prohibitions.

License-wide duties

This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

  • Promote by default rule (adopted) Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.

    This license says nothing about Promote, and the graph applies this reading in all jurisdictions it covers: it is not permitted unless the license permits it.

    A licence that says nothing about endorsement is read as not allowing it: the licence gives the licensee no right to use the licensor's name or marks in a way that states or implies that the licensor endorses the licensee or its product, while stating truthfully that a work is based on or uses the licensed work is a different act that this rule does not decide. A copyright licence grants rights in the work, and the right to use a name or a trademark is a separate right under trademark law and the protection of names, which a silent copyright licence does not pass on. Combining a licence that is silent about endorsement with one that permits it shows a conflict marked as coming from this rule.

    Basis Trademark and name rights are separate from copyright: Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 article 9 lets the proprietor of an EU trade mark prevent all third parties not having his consent from using the sign in the course of trade, and Directive (EU) 2015/2436 article 10, 15 U.S.C. 1114 and 1125(a), section 12 BGB and section 43 ABGB protect marks and names in the same way. The library's evidence is Creative Commons 4.0 section 2(b)(2): Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License. A copyright licence that is silent grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to suggest endorsement (Worldwide)

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

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.

Limitation of liability

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.

Info

Target asset types
Software
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
Legal code
http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier
MIT on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
MIT

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar 

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MIT",
  "license-title": "The MIT License",
  "spdx-id": "MIT",
  "attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle 

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MIT> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MIT"
  }
}

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MIT" rel="license">The MIT License</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge DALICC badge for The MIT License

Markdown 

[![License: The MIT License](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MIT/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MIT)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MIT"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MIT/badge.svg" alt="License: The MIT License"></a>

Review

Status
Reviewed against the license text
Last checked
2026-09-15
Reviewer
Giray Havur
Verdict
corrected during the review
Record changed since this review
yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings
6 recorded, 3 applied to the record, 0 proposed, 1 settled in a later version

The record models the MIT license: all six core permissions, commercial use, and the copyright-and-permission notice as cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties on distribute, modify and derive. Two rights the text names explicitly, sublicensing and selling copies, were missing and were added, and the SPDX id was added. One duty, the modification notice, has no basis in the text.

5 findings

  • minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

    The record id is the SPDX list id but the field was absent. Added.

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    The grant reads: "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". Sublicensing (odrl:grantUse) and charging for a copy (dalicc:chargeDistributionFee) were not modelled. Added both.

  • minor Rubric 1 dct:publisher none

    No dct:publisher. The MIT license has no steward, so "- not specified -" would at least make the gap explicit.

  • info Rubric 8 vocabulary none

    The MIT license grants no patent rights. There is nothing to record, but once a dalicc:patentGrant term exists its absence here is a real difference from Apache-2.0 that users compare these two licenses for.

  • major Rubric 10 record applied

    Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: the record carried neither the relicensing prohibition its siblings carry nor a separate liability clause. The MIT text says 'The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software', which is the same clause IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause model as a dalicc:ChangeLicense prohibition, and its disclaimer paragraph holds two sentences, the second beginning 'IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE'.

Settled in version 2 (1)

  • settled odrl:duty

    odrl:modify and odrl:derive carry a dalicc:modificationNotice duty. The MIT license has exactly one condition, "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software", and says nothing about documenting changes. The duty makes MIT look more demanding than it is in every compatibility result. Removing it is a substantive change to a heavily used record, so it is left open for the association's decision.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

  1. Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

    The content review of 2026-09-15 added 1 identification detail and 2 permissions, changed 2 permissions and recorded the review state. Later changes brought it in line with its family and its text in the verification of 2026-09-15, permitted relicensing with the notice as a duty, recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.

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    16 changes

    • added dalicc:reviewStatus dalicc:Reviewed

      Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.

    • added dalicc:reviewedOn "2026-09-15"^^xsd:date

      Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.

    • added permission dalicc:chargeDistributionFee

      Review finding The grant reads: "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". Sublicensing (odrl:grantUse) and charging for a copy (dalicc:chargeDistributionFee) were not modelled. Added both.

    • changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]

      was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      Review decision Review decision 8: the MIT license states one condition and it is not a change log, so the modification notice duty was removed.

    • added permission odrl:grantUse

      Review finding The grant reads: "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". Sublicensing (odrl:grantUse) and charging for a copy (dalicc:chargeDistributionFee) were not modelled. Added both.

    • changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]

      was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      Review decision Review decision 8: the MIT license states one condition and it is not a change log, so the modification notice duty was removed.

    • added spdx:licenseId "MIT"

      Review finding The record id is the SPDX list id but the field was absent. Added.

    • added dalicc:LiabilityLimitation "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."

      Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record carried neither the relicensing prohibition its siblings carry nor a separate liability clause. The MIT text says 'The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software', which is the same clause IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause model as a dalicc:ChangeLicense prohibition, and its disclaimer paragraph holds two sentences, the second beginning 'IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE'.

    • changed dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "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."

      was dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "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."

      Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record carried neither the relicensing prohibition its siblings carry nor a separate liability clause. The MIT text says 'The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software', which is the same clause IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause model as a dalicc:ChangeLicense prohibition, and its disclaimer paragraph holds two sentences, the second beginning 'IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE'.

    • added prohibition dalicc:ChangeLicense

      Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record carried neither the relicensing prohibition its siblings carry nor a separate liability clause. The MIT text says 'The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software', which is the same clause IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause model as a dalicc:ChangeLicense prohibition, and its disclaimer paragraph holds two sentences, the second beginning 'IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE'.

    • added permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]

      Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the record carried before is removed. The text reads: "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 ... 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 permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.

    • removed prohibition dalicc:ChangeLicense

      Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the record carried before is removed. The text reads: "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 ... 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 permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.

    • changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]

      was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]

      Manual edit The statement is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing: the text does not state it in as many words. Its duty dalicc:compliantLicense is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing.

    • changed permission dalicc:chargeDistributionFee

      was permission dalicc:chargeDistributionFee

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "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:"

    • changed permission odrl:grantUse

      was permission odrl:grantUse

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "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:"

    • added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>

      Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.

  2. Version 1

    The version this model had before the content review of 2026-09-15.

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Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.