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The MIT License, Line by Line

writing.kemitchell.com

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Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#71

Post by kemitchell »

dctoedt wrote: post #52
torstenvl wrote: post #31

Great article, similar to a blog post I did recently. This is a minor nitpick and shouldn't be read as an overall criticism of the author or this post, which is better than the one I did. However, I will note that non-infringement and title are, in fact, implied warranties in the UCC. I'm not sure why the author missed it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-312

Minor correction: Under UCC § 2-312(3) (link in parent), non-infringement is an implied warranty only if the seller is a "merchant," i.e., one who regularly deals in goods of the kind. The implied warranty of noninfringement can be disclaimed under § 2-316, and vendors almost universally do so (preferring to make specific express warranties instead when they perceive a market need). https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/…

Hiya, DC. Glad to see your name here. :-D

The UCC nerds are out in force this round!

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#72

Post by rectang »

ghaff wrote: post #16
NewJazz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the 0BSD license omits this line and has been OSI approved.

The MIT No Attribution License (MIT-0) is also OSI approved now which is effectively a public domain license. The caveat is that it won't be an approved license at a lot of companies, both because it's new and because many companies shy away from public domain software.

My understanding is that companies are leery of public domain because it means disclaiming copyright. It looks to me as though with MIT-0 you still retain copyright and are just granting an extremely liberal license?

That may prove to be a distinction without a difference if it's ever tested in court, but "giving up copyright" is scary to management so it's meaningful in practice.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#73

Post by kemitchell »

paxys wrote: post #70

> 171 words every programmer should understand Except there really isn't any agreement on some of the finer details of the license, no matter how much you want to study and understand it. Does the license text have to be included in only the source code or the compiled software? What if the source code of the derived software isn't made public? What is "substantial portions" of the software? Can a MIT project be reli…

I was involved with a group of open licensing lawyers that ended up publishing a "model" permissive license: https://blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0

It's not everything anyone ever wanted, but we think it's a lot closer.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#74

Post by [deleted] »

dctoedt wrote: post #52
torstenvl wrote: post #31

Great article, similar to a blog post I did recently. This is a minor nitpick and shouldn't be read as an overall criticism of the author or this post, which is better than the one I did. However, I will note that non-infringement and title are, in fact, implied warranties in the UCC. I'm not sure why the author missed it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-312

Minor correction: Under UCC § 2-312(3) (link in parent), non-infringement is an implied warranty only if the seller is a "merchant," i.e., one who regularly deals in goods of the kind. The implied warranty of noninfringement can be disclaimed under § 2-316, and vendors almost universally do so (preferring to make specific express warranties instead when they perceive a market need). https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/…

[deleted]

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#75

Post by detaro »

kemitchell wrote: post #67
thed wrote: post #42

This article touches a point I have been wondering about regarding the Notice condition: "But web developers, as a whole, haven’t got the memo.". The JavaScript and npm ecosystem are extremely dependency-heavy. Even if you only take a few yourself, the number of sub-dependencies of even a simple application are often in the hundreds. Why does "everyone" ignore the attribution of their dependencies and sub-dependencie…

I doubt there's any single answer that isn't tautological. In other kinds of development, like embedded programming, notice files are a part of the cycle. Web developers simply haven't developed the habit. Which is a real head scratcher, because as a rule, JavaScript developers use JavaScript package managers, and JavaScript package managers, especially npm, provide good license metadata and auditability. You can hav…

I've seen at least some minified/bundled JS files that neatly preserved the copyright notices for each minified blob they included.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#76

Post by fogof »

martincmartin wrote: post #18
tacitusarc wrote: post #14

> The implied warranty of “merchantability” under UCC section 2-314 is a promise that “the goods”—the Software—are of at least average quality, properly packaged and labeled, and fit for the ordinary purposes they are intended to serve. So, all goods have an implied warranty requiring they must be of at least average quality? How does that work? Does average have a different meeting in a legal context?

Suppose I sell you an oil filter for your 2019 Mazda. When you get it home, you realize there's a big hole in it, and it can't be used to replace the one currently on your car. You call me up and I say "I never said it would work in a car, I just said it was an oil filter (true) which would fit into a 2019 Mazda (true)." The law says "nice try, you can't be that pedantic. The ordinary purpose of oil filters it to act…

What if the oil filter doesn't have a hole in it, but just has 10,000 miles on it so it doesn't work well anymore. Would selling that be ok? What about a filter with 9,000 miles, or 5,000 miles, or 1,000 miles? Who decides what the cutoff is?

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#77

Post by throwaway8581 »

kemitchell wrote: post #68
throwaway8581 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't really get it right. This is what the UCC actually says: (2) Goods to be merchantable must be at least such as: (a) Pass without objection in the trade under the contract description; and (b) In the case of fungible goods, are of fair average quality within the description; and (c) Are fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used; and (d) Run, within the variations permitted by the…

I paraphrased, because I don't think the nuances matter that much in context. The subject is a broad disclaimer of implied warranties, after all. Quoting the UCC and commentaries would only distract the reader and make the post longer.

In this case, I think it'd be better to leave the "average" language out of it altogether. It doesn't really capture any useful intuitive notion for the reader and instead engenders misunderstanding, as shown by this thread.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#78

Post by rectang »

paxys wrote: post #70

> 171 words every programmer should understand Except there really isn't any agreement on some of the finer details of the license, no matter how much you want to study and understand it. Does the license text have to be included in only the source code or the compiled software? What if the source code of the derived software isn't made public? What is "substantial portions" of the software? Can a MIT project be reli…

> Can a MIT project be relicensed?

Among more sophisticated users I don't think there's disagreement on this point. The answer is "no", if by "relicense" you mean "remove the MIT license and put in something else". You can never legitimately remove the MIT license from a file unless you're the copyright holder or their authorized agent.

Where there's less than total agreement is whether the MIT license may be subsumed by another license — e.g. the Apache License 2.0 — when an MIT licensed work is bundled within a package. Can you claim that the complete package is available "under the Apache License 2.0", omitting the fact that the licenses are actually polyglot?

The answer to that question seems to be "everybody does that" and "in practice, the legal risk seems to approach zero", but in theory should two licenses ever prove to have incompatible provisions then things could get sticky in a court case.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#79

Post by shawnz »

lekevicius wrote: post #3
notRobot wrote: post #2

(2016)

It's not like anything in the license has changed since late 80s.

In fact the author did later post a follow-up highly critical of the MIT license, recommending their own creation instead:

https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation-Notice...

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#80

Post by throwaway8581 »

torstenvl wrote: post #21
tacitusarc wrote: post #14

> The implied warranty of “merchantability” under UCC section 2-314 is a promise that “the goods”—the Software—are of at least average quality, properly packaged and labeled, and fit for the ordinary purposes they are intended to serve. So, all goods have an implied warranty requiring they must be of at least average quality? How does that work? Does average have a different meeting in a legal context?

Average has exactly the meaning it has in all other contexts. It seems to be a bizarrely common (and obviously incorrect) meme on HN that half of all elements of a set are below average.

This is wrong. See my other comment. The "average" language in the UCC provision is referring to a specific notion for a particular kind of situation.
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