The MITA License

I've always like the MIT License. However, there was one thing that always bugged me about it. That's the copyright notice.

You see, the copyright notice is often not really correct. It often is when the project is in its early phases, but when more contributors start adding things, it may not be correct. However, the license itself stipulates that you cannot change the notice. Surely, you yourself can change the license, but once there are more contributors who should be considered you becomes more and more foggy as well.

One way this is often mitigated by a copyright notice that refers to some "software group". However, that's often not how the project started off and whether it was actually legal to change it to that is often a bit up in the air. And whether new contributions actually are copyright of said group completely depends on the contributors agreement (if there was one to begin with). Oh, and the jurisdiction the viewer is on may have something to say about it as well.

At the end of the day, the copyright statement is often just incorrect or it may just be undecidable. Of course the copyright statement doesn't need to be factual for the license to work, but the license does make sure that you cannot change it. I just don't like that.

That's why I forked the license. I replaced "copyright notice" with "attribution notice". The idea is that you can put anything above it, things like "Project <A> was started by <B>" and "This software was created by <C>" come to mind, but you may very well think of something completely different yourself. It can basically be anything, as long as it's something that you can clearly refer to as an "attribution notice".

I named my fork "MITA", after MIT-Attribution, but I pronounce it as in (Playstation) Vita. The license can be combined with a copyright notice elsewhere (though it won't be protected by the license, of course). The home of the license is my website which was launched pretty recently. (Hi there, future visitor! Is the link broken? Do let me know. When I wrote this I was definitely planning to change the url at least once or twice and may well have forgotten to update this link.) The text of the license can also be found below.

<freeform attibution notice>

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 attribution 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.