Re: wip/portmidi: custom license or MIT?

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Manuel Kuklinski <mk%asdfghasdfgh.de@localhost> writes:

> as I wrote Jason privately and he kindly told me to direct / forward
> this question to the mailing-list, I'm kindly asking to take a look at
> the wip/portmidi license; it's unclear to me if this license, which
> full version can be found here:
>
>     https://github.com/PortMidi/portmidi/blob/master/license.txt
>
> is either:
>
> b) a plain MIT license
>
> a) a custom license, which should be added to mk/license.mk
>
> I'm asking especially because of the addition of:
>
> - - - - - - - - - - %< - - - - - - - - - -
>
>> /*
>>  * The text above constitutes the entire PortMidi license; however, 
>>  * the PortMusic community also makes the following non-binding requests:
>>  *
>>  * Any person wishing to distribute modifications to the Software is
>>  * requested to send the modifications to the original developer so that
>>  * they can be incorporated into the canonical version. It is also
>>  * requested that these non-binding requests be included along with the 
>>  * license above.
>>  */
>
> - - - - - - - - - - %< - - - - - - - - - -
>
> I'm aware that this addition is just a, as stated, "non-binding request",
> but I'm uncertain how to proceed with this, not only from a legal point
> of view: since it's added to license.txt, does it count as a
> modification of the MIT license, and shall be, as asked in question b)
> stated as a custom license in mk/license.mk?

The point of the license marking system is that people not accidentally
install software under a license they don't like.   In this case, it is
really clear that the text above (not quoted by you which is fine) is
the license and the two paragraphs above are not part of it.  So I think
it's fine to cut them from the text of the "license" and then diff,
and it sounds like that ends up at "MIT".

If the authors didn't want this result, they would have written it
differently.