MIT without copyright notice, requires to include the copyright notice

[Miro Hrončok]

Hello.

I see an important project has decided it's good idea to remove their own 
copyright notice from the top of their MIT license file while preserving the 
requirement for distributors to keep the copyright notice.

"""
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
"""

But there is no such copyright notice to include.

Is it OK for a Fedora package to distribute the project or is it impossible to 
comply with the license terms and hence not allowed?

https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/commit/5957d58266e479f124b31f30e4322e798f...

https://github.com/jaraco/skeleton/issues/78

https://github.com/jaraco/inflect/issues/197

Note that this is not the case of MIT-0.

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Sep 2, 2024 at 9:23 AM Miro Hrončok  wrote:
> I see an important project has decided it's good idea to remove their own
> copyright notice from the top of their MIT license file while preserving the
> requirement for distributors to keep the copyright notice.
>
> """
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
> """
>
> But there is no such copyright notice to include.
>
> Is it OK for a Fedora package to distribute the project

Yes. I think the only reason this is not more common is that a lot of
people copy-paste the MIT license text (including the copyright notice
template) from other sources like the OSI website or other projects.

However, the detail "their own" is important. If we were aware of a
project where the current maintainers were removing copyright notices
of third parties from MIT license texts, this should be seen as an
error. This seems to be what almost happened with inflect.
> or is it impossible to
> comply with the license terms and hence not allowed?

That itself doesn't concern me. I would interpret it as "the above
copyright notice (if one exists)".

But (in an MIT license scenario, and probably most other open source
license scenarios) I'd see removal of someone else's copyright notice
without their permission as a license violation, unless it was
determined that the original copyright notice was or became incorrect,
as is common. Here's a case of what I believe is an incorrect MIT
license copyright notice that I recently pointed out:
https://github.com/containers/bootc/issues/766

Richard

[Miro Hrončok]

On 03. 09. 24 4:46, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 2, 2024 at 9:23 AM Miro Hrončok  wrote:
> > I see an important project has decided it's good idea to remove their own
> > copyright notice from the top of their MIT license file while preserving the
> > requirement for distributors to keep the copyright notice.
> >
> > """
> > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
> > all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
> > """
> >
> > But there is no such copyright notice to include.
> >
> > Is it OK for a Fedora package to distribute the project
>
> Yes. I think the only reason this is not more common is that a lot of
> people copy-paste the MIT license text (including the copyright notice
> template) from other sources like the OSI website or other projects.

Thanks, Richard.
> However, the detail "their own" is important. If we were aware of a
> project where the current maintainers were removing copyright notices
> of third parties from MIT license texts, this should be seen as an
> error. This seems to be what almost happened with inflect.

It was removed and than reverted upstream.

In setuptools 74.1.0, they bundle inflect 7.3.1 which doesn't have it:

https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/v74.1.0/setuptools/_vendor/inflect-7...

Do I need to patch the copyright in? Or do I need to convince upstream to 
release new version of inflect with the copyright notice and bundle that one?
> > or is it impossible to
> > comply with the license terms and hence not allowed?
>
> That itself doesn't concern me. I would interpret it as "the above
> copyright notice (if one exists)".
>
> But (in an MIT license scenario, and probably most other open source
> license scenarios) I'd see removal of someone else's copyright notice
> without their permission as a license violation, unless it was
> determined that the original copyright notice was or became incorrect,
> as is common. Here's a case of what I believe is an incorrect MIT
> license copyright notice that I recently pointed out:
> https://github.com/containers/bootc/issues/766

ack

[Miro Hrončok]

On 03. 09. 24 11:58, Miro Hrončok wrote:
> On 03. 09. 24 4:46, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > However, the detail "their own" is important. If we were aware of a
> > project where the current maintainers were removing copyright notices
> > of third parties from MIT license texts, this should be seen as an
> > error. This seems to be what almost happened with inflect.
>
> It was removed and than reverted upstream.
>
> In setuptools 74.1.0, they bundle inflect 7.3.1 which doesn't have it:
>
> https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/v74.1.0/setuptools/_vendor/inflect-7...
>
> Do I need to patch the copyright in? Or do I need to convince upstream to 
> release new version of inflect with the copyright notice and bundle that one?

Never mind, the copyright is here:

https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/v74.1.0/setuptools/_vendor/inflect/_...