GLOSSARY / DEFINITION
What is MIT license
The MIT license is a short, permissive open source license that lets you use, modify, and distribute the software for any purpose, including commercial use, with attribution as effectively its only condition. For an enterprise, it is among the lowest risk licenses a dependency can carry, which is precisely why it is worth understanding what it does and does not require.
Definition
The MIT license is one of the most widely used open source licenses. It is permissive, meaning it grants broad rights and asks for very little in return. Under its terms you may use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell the software, for any purpose including commercial use, without paying a royalty. The single substantive condition is that the original copyright notice and the permission notice are included in all copies or substantial portions of the software. The license also disclaims warranty, providing the software as is. It is approved by the Open Source Initiative, so it is open source in the formal sense, not merely source available.
What it permits and what it requires
The practical shape of the MIT license is easy to summarize. It permits almost everything an enterprise wants to do, including building proprietary products on top of the software and shipping them to customers without disclosing your own source code. It requires almost nothing, just attribution. You must preserve the copyright and permission notice where the software is included. There is no copyleft, so you are not obliged to license your modifications under the same terms, and there is no network or service restriction of the kind found in the Server Side Public License. The chief compliance task is keeping the notice intact, which is a documentation discipline rather than a constraint on how you deploy.
Why it carries low license risk
From a buyer's risk perspective, the MIT license is close to the safest posture a dependency can have. It carries no competitive use restriction, no copyleft reciprocity, and no commercial license demand. The exposure that worries enterprises in the current relicensing wave, where software moves to the Business Source License or the Server Side Public License and attaches new conditions to production use, is the opposite of what the MIT license imposes. That said, a permissive license today is not a guarantee for the future. A project under the MIT license can in principle change its license in a new version, so the safe posture applies to the version you actually run. The discipline is to confirm the license of each version in your tree, not to assume a project that was once MIT is MIT everywhere you depend on it.
Related reading
For another permissive license that is similar in spirit, see what is the Apache License 2.0. For how permissive licenses sit against copyleft and source available terms, read permissive, copyleft, and source available explained. Both sit alongside the rest of our open source license risk glossary.
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Questions buyers ask.
What is the MIT license?
The MIT license is a short, permissive open source license that allows you to use, copy, modify, and distribute the software for any purpose, including commercial use, with almost no conditions. The single substantive requirement is that the copyright notice and license text are preserved in copies. It is approved by the Open Source Initiative.
Is the MIT license safe for commercial use?
Yes. The MIT license permits commercial use without royalty and imposes no copyleft or service restriction. The main obligation is attribution, preserving the copyright notice and license text. For most enterprises it is among the lowest risk open source licenses to depend on.
What does the MIT license require me to do?
It requires that the original copyright notice and the permission notice be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software. There is no requirement to share your own source code and no restriction on how you deploy. The software is provided as is, with no warranty.
How does the MIT license differ from copyleft licenses?
The MIT license is permissive, so it does not require you to release your modifications or surrounding code under the same terms. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL and the GNU AGPL do impose such obligations. The difference is the reciprocity requirement, which the MIT license does not have.
Is this legal advice?
No. This is commercial and licensing risk advisory, not legal advice. For interpretation of the MIT license and how it applies to your use, engage your own counsel.