{"id":"MIT-Modern-Variant","title":"MIT License Modern Variant","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/MIT-Modern-Variant.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The record models the modern MIT variant, the wording used by Ptolemy and Tcl and Tk. Its grant is narrower in form than the MIT grant, being a permission to use, copy, modify and distribute rather than a permission to deal in the software without restriction, and it names neither sublicensing nor selling. The condition is the familiar notice condition, modelled as cc:Attribution and cc:Notice on distribute, modify and derive, as on IscLicense.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant reads: \"Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose\". The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works and modified works. Sublicensing is not named, so neither dalicc:sublicense nor odrl:grantUse is written. dalicc:chargeDistributionFee follows the library convention for a license that is silent about what the licensee may charge; the phrase about royalty fees describes the licensor, not the licensee.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The condition reads: \"provided that the above copyright notice and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies of this software\". cc:Attribution and cc:Notice are duties on distribute, modify and derive, so the notice travels with a changed copy too.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited because the text requires the license itself to travel with every copy, which is the reading IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause take of the same clause. The MIT record does not carry the prohibition although its text has the same requirement, so the library is not uniform here. (Corrected on 2026-09-15 by the verification pass: see the rubric 3 finding on relicensing below.)","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"No endorsement or advertising clause, so dalicc:promote is not prohibited.","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The text carries the liability paragraph first and the warranty paragraph second. Each is quoted into its own field, in the words of the text.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following IscLicense. The text licenses software and its documentation.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Against MIT the difference is the missing sublicense and sell wording, and the warranty paragraph, which here also disclaims any obligation to provide maintenance, support, updates or modifications. Against IscLicense the deontic model is identical.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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 earlier reading wrote is removed. The text reads: \"Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that the above copyright notice and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies of this software.\" The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. cc:legalcode points at the Fedora licensing page, which is the reference SPDX itself names for this wording; the license has no steward, so there is no dct:publisher."}