The license was drafted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for certain software originating from the Institute. The license was initially used for the X window system. Some of the softwares that use the MIT License include Expat, PuTTY, Ruby on Rails and so on.

Rights

The MIT License allows a person obtaining a software under the license to deal in the software in any manner. The license specifically gives the following rights over the software:

• Right to use;

• Right to copy;

• Right to modify;

• Right to merge,

• Right to publish;

• Right to distribute,

• Right to sublicense; and/or

• Right to sell.

 The rights granted under the license include both copyrights and patent rights.

 Conditions

The rights are granted by the license under the condition that the copyright notice and the permission notice forms part of every copy of the software or substantial portions of the software. As there are no other conditions in the license, the license gives a broad range of flexibilities to a person wishing to deal in the software.

No Warranty and Liability

The license does not give any type of warranty with regard to any aspect of the software. Any person who makes a software available under the license cannot be held liable for any damage caused by the software.

While the license is short and similar to the BSD license, it imposes less conditions and therefore provides more flexibilities than the BSD license.