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Comment by lnxg33k1 | Hacker News Reader

--- 1. It has conflicting branding. How is a newbie gonna know the difference? How many will misclick it because it sorts first, or because they don't know it's different than true MIT? ---

Not a lawyer either and I deeply hate MIT(s) but my favourite concept in law is that ignorance is never a justification and is never used so, if you are using a license, don't be ignorant on that license? Or should we avoid doing things because there is people who wouldn't bother getting documented that could get upset? :o

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Since I'm one of the ignorant people, would you educate me and share the reasons for your MIT license distaste ?

If you're a big enterprise with lots of open source dependencies, you have to audit your ENTIRE dependency chain to see which of them are MIT licensed, and include the license text for each one.

It's a pain, so many big shops avoid MIT, and more restrictive licenses like GPL

I'd like the OP to answer, because this argument is pretty much usable for most FOSS licences, not specifically MIT.

Besides, legally, you should know all the licences of all your dependancies, and pulling that out is usually scripted in big shops.

So given the strong aversion demonstrating in the comment, I'm expecting something different.

So you're happy to build your commercial product upon the free works of hundreds of FOSS developers, but only if you can't be arsed to give them attribution? Cry me a river! An enterprise has a responsibility to manage its licenses. Complaining that it's not fun is just childish.

I think also it becomes an issue where you have to preclude a source file with ~10+ copies of the same license for each dependencies. It's the way you have to satisfy the attribution requirement (eg "must include this text," rather than "must include a link to this text somewhere in the source tree") that presents the issue.

It's part of why, as I said in the original comment, lots of big shops do _everything_ in house, even when there's a higher quality open source alternative. They simply don't use projects with attribution requirements that are too strict.

Could be the attribution requirement, which this new MIT-0 removes

All things being equal, people will use the license that is easiest for them to understand that it meets their needs.

(One of their needs might be that other people also easily understand their license)

Using familiar “branding” like MIT is arguably a way to communicate easily and efficiently.

When people sell “gluten free pizza” they are banking on the fact that people know what a pizza is.

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