I used to be an IP lawyer, so have experience with license-ese. I feel like the terms themselves are fairly readable and understandable, but then again, I'm marred by three years of law school and some lawyering time before getting my wits again and returning to hacking. Particularly since I'm not currently an active lawyer, this certainly isn't intended as legal advice in the slightest.
Lets start with the MIT license language itself. Then I'll lay out a few key points to understanding open source licenses, then address your questions and provide any high-level observations.
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: (that they leave this notice in it. The end. )
A few key things with most open source licenses (including BSD, MIT, GPL) for copyright owners are:
- The license doesn't alter your ownership of the copyright itself. Its a non-exclusive license, not an assignment or forfeiture of ownership. Using an OS license is not "putting something into the public domain", although that is certainly one approach to open source.
- Nothing "forces" you, the copyright owner, to make the code public in any way just because you attach a license to it.
- But if you use an OS license, you can't prevent anyone who "obtains" your OS-licensed code from making it public in any way, which is explicitly within their rights under all of these licenses.
- Copyleft (e.g., GPL) licenses do require obtainers (but not the owners) to make their derived works public and open source. Permissive (MIT, BSD) don't. (this may be a bit of a simplification, but is the essential difference)
- There isn't a "takeback" clause to most open-source licenses (e.g., MIT) so once someone has "obtained" your code, they have the right to use it perpetually, under the license terms under which they received it.
- You can always distribute future versions of your code under a different license, or keep them completely proprietary. That doesn't stop someone from starting with your previous, open-source version (assuming they "obtained it") and adding on their own new parts and distributing it.
- You can remove a channel of "obtaining" for previous versions of your code, e.g., take it off github. However, as mentioned, that does not prevent others from using or distributing any previous versions you had open sourced, in any way.
With that basis, I'll move on to your questions.
I am not distributing my code to anyone. I don't have to distribute my
MIT licensed code to anyone, if I own the copyright, correct? I mean,
can someone request that I release my code that I now claim it is
under MIT license? It would not be the end of the world and I would
certainly agree to do that under a legal threat. ... At the same time,
i do not want to distribute this code as an open-source project to
anyone.
As copyright holder, you don't have to distribute any code to anyone; you wouldn't have to honor such requests (even if it was GPL). You retain all rights. However, in the situation you describe, you would be distributing to your new company and licensing it to them perpetually under an OS license. Your employer (more likely ex-employer) could paste your code to the internet, and you wouldn't be able to do a thing about it besides grumble.
I assume you mean "anyone besides my employer". If you don't want to give it to your employer "as open-source" and give them all the rights that are included in that license, including redistribution and perpetual use in whatever way they want, then you shouldn't be using an open source license. You should just licensing it directly to them under the terms you want. Bullet point out what you want, and have a lawyer bill you an hour or two to put them into a paragraph form. Or write it yourself. Licenses are just contracts which are just agreements put into words.
My final goal is to be able to use a derived version of my previous coded framework without losing the copyright to it.
You can't lose the copyright unless you assign it to someone, license it exclusively (including excluding yourself) or forfeit it. Open source license are none of these. You'll always be able to use derived versions you create, and can even license the derivations differently or retain all rights.
But, a primary, legitimate concern of yours seems to be that you continue to be able to retain copyright and use your code in the future without the employer claiming the code as theirs or that you're outside your rights to do so. The keys to this is to create an irrefutable evidence that A) you retain copyright to your previous work and are providing it to them under X license terms (MIT works, if you're ok with the open-source aspect of it described above.) B) they agree to these terms, and C) what, exactly the previous work was.
For (A) and (B) you can get them to sign or agree in writing to something that references or includes the license and that they understand that you're bringing the code to the table under those terms. As to (C) I'm not sure what the standard way of doing this would be, but be logical. If its not terribly massive you could just print the code out and include it in the addendum in copies of the agreement that both you and your employer sign. Keep your copy, with their signature on it. If it is too big to practically print, it seems like an md5 hash would come in useful here. Maybe you could refer to it as something like "the zip file named X in the private github repository /, (or ftp site, etc.), which has a md5 hash of XXXXXX... and was emailed to Y company reprentative on Z date". Then you can email it to your manager or their lawyer or whoever from your personal email account and even if they delete their copy you still keep yours and they can't argue that you predicted the future md5 hash of code that isn't written yet. That would theoretically prevent them from claiming anything else down the road.
Best Answer
I'm not a lawyer, but the answer is yes. Copyright holder is the person or entity that can claim right to having created a piece work, or to whom such right has been transferred. The MIT license is not about transferring copyright, but about granting legal right to use the (copyrighted) work as stated in the license. If you write a class, you have the copyright to it, even if its actual use depends on third-party work.
Once you add your class to the software package and distribute the whole package, the package has multiple copyright holders: the original authors, and you. You are allowed to distribute the parts from the original package because the MIT license allows you to "use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software".