Can someone fork a MIT-licensed project, distribute the binaries as a paid software, and keep it closed source?

Question

If I license my project with MIT-license, could someone:

fork the project and distribute the binaries as a paid software
just have a quote of my original license in the Help > About dialog box, as required by "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
and keep it closed source? without "sharing it alike"?

@FelixG honestly, that's the answer in a nutshell. Feel free to post it, I can upvote it, hopefully the OP can accept it, and we can all move on! — MadHatter, Nov 24 '20 at 09:41

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '20 at 10:21

Yes, they can.

If someone displays the original license in a dialog box as you described, they have fulfilled the requirements of the MIT license. Therefore they can also enjoy all the rights granted by it (one of which is to sell the software).

If you don't want that, you can use a copyleft license like the GPL. Those licenses still grant the rights to sell the software, but they have additional requirements which guarantee that the software remains open-source.

Can someone fork a MIT-licensed project, distribute the binaries as a paid software, and keep it closed source?

1 Answers1