On the spirit of contract from MIT Protocol

Author: Wei Jianfan

See lee smile before it happen to him the story, said that he lives in ShuangYuShu that year (2001), often go ShuangAn underground supermarket shopping malls, once bought a what things feel bad, want to refund, supermarket clerk said according to regulations, the goods sold shall not return, lee smile to great anger, say you take out your stipulated in writing, If THERE is, I will not retreat, if not, then I must retreat, finally called to the supermarket manager, the manager a look at this person is not good, but also noisy Li smile to, to retreat.

What is the point of telling this story? In fact, we all know that in Chinese supermarkets more than 20 years ago, many management regulations were verbal, how could they be written in black and white?

From the point of view of the supermarket waiter, Li Xiaolai’s behavior is to make trouble, is to stir up unruly; Li Xiaolai must feel that it is safeguarding their legitimate consumer rights and interests; The supermarket management would be most shocked. If it were me, I would immediately call for a policy to be drawn up on return and exchange. I really don’t want to meet another person like that.

That’s the spirit of the contract. You say yes, you write it down, and IF you write it down, I recognize it.

Now the MIT protocol.

The MIT License is known as The MIT License for open source software.

Someone did a special analysis of Kaggle two years ago. MIT is the most used license on Github, followed by Apache 2.0, GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0 and BSD-3-clause.

Note: in this context, “MIT Agreement” and “MIT License” are equivalent.

What is an open source license?

The open source license is, I put the source code online, and if it’s good, a lot of people ask me, can I use your code? Can I put that code in my product? I used your code. Why are there so many bugs? I want to use your code as a teaching case, is it ok? By the way, I used your code, and it felt good, and I changed a lot of things, and I put it online, and I changed the name, and you’re okay with that? I’m going to change my name, too, because I’m writing more code than you are in this software right now!

(This is more copyright awareness, afraid not to ask you to use later on the lawsuit.)

I can’t be bothered to answer so many questions, so I’m going to put all the possible questions in my code in a paragraph that says:

I give you permission to XXXX, I give you permission to XXXX, you can XXXX, but you have to XXXX, if you XXXX, you have to XXXX, by the way, I’m not responsible for XXXX.

If you agree, use it. If you don’t, don’t use it. If you use it and it violates the requirements of the permit, I may Sue you!

This is the license.

You can write your own license, but if you are lazy (and most people are lazy), you can use a better license written by someone else.

There are many well-written open source licenses, such as GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. MIT is just one of them.

You can pick one that suits you. These license templates are free, and no one expects to sell them for money.

As for their differences, you can take a look at the picture below to get a general idea.

“New Bee Mall” event

A while ago there was an open source project called Newbee Mart (newbee for short) that was in the news, and it was under the MIT license, and the authors were told, hey, your open source software is being sold online, do you care?

On the author’s first look, it is true that some up owners sell on B sites, and some sell on idle fish. Although they are not expensive, some sell 300, some sell dozens, but at a glance, it is obvious that what they sell is their own “new bees”!

You can click here ->… What is this operation

Then a little lively, some people say that this is infringement, to support the author, accuse someone so shameless; Some people say it’s not infringement, MIT has a very loose agreement, you can basically do anything, as long as you keep the author’s copyright.

However, the author did not want to deal with it. The author just thought, “I took time off work to write the project intermittently for half a year, which could be regarded as my small work, if not my painstaking efforts. Admire.”

Probably the author is still relatively young, do not understand the sinister world bar!

This should have been expected.

There shouldn’t be any psychological ripples.

What’s more, MIT licenses allow others to sell your source code!

In the spirit of the contract, if you say let someone do it, let them do it.

Here’s a question that’s hard for novices to figure out: Why are there licenses that allow others to sell their own open source software?

This is to talk about the spirit of open source, not a little concept readers can have a look at this: 7 ideas of open source

Early open source players, open source their own code, most not to sell software, most have open, sharing, freedom, break monopoly and so on more ideal complex, the only graph is probably a “name”, so almost all licenses require to retain the name of the author.

To better distribute their code, open source authors often allow others to sell their source code. The initial consideration is: if someone burns Linux source code on CD and distributes it, should there be a cost charge, or a service charge?

If someone profiteers from this, isn’t it a loss? Usually not. Since the source code can be downloaded online for free, wise people will not pay a lot of money to buy it.

Moreover, if the author finds that someone really can use their source code profiteering, it is completely possible to not authorize him to profit from it, just change the license. It’s not unheard of, and it’s not unique. See how open source companies are being “parasitized” by cloud vendors?

For example, CockroachDB, an open Source cloud native SQL database, announced to modify its open Source License from apache-2.0 to Business Source License (BSL). The only thing the protocol requires users not to do is provide database as a service (DBaaS) in CockroachDB on a commercial basis without authorization.

BSL was designed by MySQL developer Michael “Monty” Widenius in 2013. It has three main characteristics: first, there is no restriction on non-commercial use, and there is restriction on commercial use; Second, the license can be added to the user’s own requirements; Third, there is a change date. From this time, the source code will be converted from BSL to other licenses specified by the author, such as GPL and other open source licenses.

In my opinion, it is normal for xianyu to sell “new bees” for dozens of yuan and take after-sales service.

What does MIT say (learn English!)

First look at the original text:

Copyright ( C )

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:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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.

Poor English directly faint!

English even if ok, want to understand, also have to watch for a while!

The following is the main composition of the sentence:

The first paragraph:

Permission is ( hereby ) granted ( , free of charge, For 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:

It basically means: License is granted to any person who may use, copy, merge, distribute, distribute, sublicense or sell copies of the Software, free of charge and without restriction, provided that the following conditions are met: And to sublicense others (those installed with the software) to do the above.

Permit persons to permit persons to permit persons to permit persons to permit persons to permit persons to use persons to copy to do so They are furnished to persons to whom the Software is furnished.

Another interesting thing is that this long list of permitted options is followed by an and/or.

And /or is used to connect two options, such as A and/or B, meaning A or B or both. Although the and/or concatenates only the last two options, the intent seems to be to concatenate all. A and/or B and/or C and/or D and/or E A and/or B and/or C and/or D and/or E This seems to be rigorous, but in fact it is redundant. Because without it it does not affect the understanding of the meaning of the text, it actually increases the confusion. (There is much criticism of and/or in both literary and legal contexts.)

The second paragraph:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included ( in all ( copies or substantial portions ) of the Software ) .

The above copyright notice and license notice must be included in all complete copies or material elements of the software. If you modify the software by only 5%, then both the copyright statement and the license statement must be included. If you modify the software by 95%, then you are not necessarily required. The exact amount you need depends on whether substantially they still belong to each other.

The third paragraph:

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. ) ) ) ) )

This software IS “AS IS”, “AS IS” means “AS IS”, after selling (or free) will not be any responsibility, “don’t come to me again, that’s it.” If you have any problems, you can accept them or find a way to deal with them. Anyway, I don’t deal with them anymore. That’s what I mean. Sometimes WHEN I sell second-hand goods on Xianyu, I really want to add a sign “AS IS”, but considering that many people don’t know the word, I’ll let it go.

The above paragraph in all caps is long, but ok, it’s not too difficult. It basically says: This software IS AS IS (does not provide any warranty, (whether it’s explicit or implicit, including but not limited to merchantability, applicability of guarantee, non-infringement guarantee)), in any case, (the rights and interests of any recourse, damages or any liability), the author or the copyright owners are not responsible for. (Whether such liability arises from contract, tort, or directly or indirectly from the Software and circumstances related to the use or operation of the Software)

MERCHANTABILITY means that once an item has been sold (although it may be free) it can be returned or replaced if there is a problem. MERCHANTABILITY is generally the default guarantee (even if not explicitly stated) that the law will support the consumer’s right to return or replace substandard products. But for AS IS, it means don’t call me if you don’t feel good about it. Don’t call me if you think you can’t use it, and I don’t guarantee that my software is infringing.

Almost half of the MIT protocol is devoted to this, which is important enough to see the strong sense of commercial economy and legal consciousness in the West.

It’s a distancing attitude, which means don’t call me if anything goes wrong, let alone Sue me in court. I contribute source code to you, not to cause trouble for myself, I do not earn your money.

Just think, if in a medical equipment software, the use of “this software”, the result of a bug caused medical accident, the result traced down, but also find me trouble, how CAN I stand!

Pick out all the trunk of the license, which is:

Permission is granted to any person to deal in the Software without restriction, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE.

The copyright of the following translation belongs to me:

MIT Open Source License (English translation: Sir Wei, follow: CC-BY protocol)

Copyright (C) < year here > < name of copyright holder here >

Hereby to any get copies of this software and related documents (hereinafter generally referred to as “the software”) of the authorized person: the licensee shall have the right to free, unlimited access to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, licensing, sell the software copy again, and shall have the right to supply people to be granted the same rights, but must meet the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this license notice must be included in all copies or material uses of the software.

The Software is provided “as is” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any warranties of merchantability, fitness, non-infringement or otherwise. In no event shall the author or copyright holder be liable for any claims, damages or other liability. No matter such liability arises from contract, tort, or directly or indirectly from the software and circumstances related to the use or operation of the Software.

Translated into a shortened version of The Vernacular, about the following:

Copyright is my XXX, from XXXX this year!

I authorize anyone to do anything, including selling copies!

However, you must:

My copyright and license reserved!

This software is like this! Don’t call me if anything goes wrong!

How do I use someone else’s code to qualify?

Using a source code that uses the MIT protocol, you only need to retain the copyright and license information.

This means including the LICENSE file, which has a full MIT LICENSE and also includes the author’s copyright information.

You should also keep the copyright and license headers in other people’s source code.

Since the MIT protocol does not require the user to open source, if you are distributing only executable software (without the source code), this should be stated on one of the software interfaces.

Google’s Chrome browser, for example, uses a lot of open source software and has explicit features in its interface.

In the “About” section of Chrome, it says: “Google Chrome could not have been created without the Chromium project and other open source software.”

Clicking on “Open Source Software” opens up a page listing a long list of open source software, its licenses, and home pages (or code repositories).

Here’s a partial screenshot:

That’s pretty standard.

I’m just going to pick one of them that uses the MIT protocol: Brotli

When you go into its code repository, you can see that its source header looks like this.

/* Copyright 2013 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Distributed under MIT license.

See the file LICENSE for detail or copy at opensource.org/licenses/MI…

* /

Screenshot below:

Note the usage: the copyright is stated in the first line, followed by a reference to the MIT license. It’s a little bit cleaner.

After all, the only thing required in an MIT license is copyright. So just put the information from the first sentence here, and the MIT license doesn’t need to be touched.

Notice that copyright means who owns the copyright in the software, and license means what the copyright owner allows others to do with the software.

The sentence “All Rights Reserved” can be written or not. It’s just a formality. Go to court, all rights are subject to copyright laws.

By the way, to explain the year concept in copyright:

Software is issued with a Copyright declaration, which will include the year, such as Copyright 2012, Copyright 2008-2012, etc. If only one year is included, it is the first release year.

If a time range is included, the first year is the year of the first release, and the second year is the year of the current release.

For example, Microsoft Windows XP Copyright© 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. The first Windows version was released in 1985, and the Windows XP version was released in 2001.

I am the author, how do I use the MIT protocol

What should I do if my open source software uses the MIT license?

Here’s what you usually do:

• In one tier of catalogs, produce a copy of the licenses (or copypapers) containing the complete text of that LICENSE.

• In the header of all source code, state copyright, state license.

Note: Some projects use more than one license. A Licenses directory will be created to store these licenses. (E.g. Cockroachdb)

In the copyright line, you can also include the home page of your software or the location of the code. Generally speaking, users should not delete this line.

For example, the Magnolia License instructs people to use it like this:

So what does the new bee do?

I took a look at the Github repository of Newbee and, yes, the author placed the LICENSE file in the level 1 directory.

Open the LICENSE file, and the following information is displayed:

The year is listed as 2019-2029, and the copyright holder is listed as Newbee-Mall.

This needs to be improved, the year should not be written to 2029, should be written to the current release year.

The copyright holder should write “thirteen” (or “13”) instead of the name of the software.

Look at the source code inside how to write:

No copyright or license information was found in the header of any source code, and this practice is not standard.

It can be seen that author 13 has not studied open source licenses.

Some answers to questions

Can I change my license? B: Sure. (MIT allows you to do anything)

Therefore, the MIT protocol is very compatible with other protocols (in fact, one-way compatibility), for example, it is perfectly possible to change an MIT protocol software to GPL, but a GPL software can not be changed back to MIT.

Can I write my own license? B: Sure.

Can I not write any permission? Of course, no permission is “all rights reserved”. You can ask them to call you, email you, send you wechat, and then you tell them what they can do.

A retained license basically means that they can’t do anything except look at your source code (because you open source it yourself), and they can’t do anything except rights under copyright law.

If I retain all rights, does he have the right to operate? It can work if it is for study, research or appreciation.

He can also review your software.

Because our copyright law gives him the right to:

Article 22 of the current Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China (amended 2010) stipulates:

In the following cases, a work may be used without permission from, and without payment of remuneration to, the copyright owner, provided that the name of the author and the title of the work shall be indicated and the other rights enjoyed by the copyright owner in accordance with this Law shall not be infringed upon:

(1) Using a published work of others for personal study, research or enjoyment;

(2) appropriately quoting a published work of others in a work for the purpose of introducing or commenting on a work or illustrating a problem;

…

What if someone doesn’t follow my permission? You can Sue him.

However, winning the case is another topic!