The first part of the license implies you can do basically whatever you want with it (copy, modify, sell etc).
But the second part says that these freedoms must propagate into all copies of the software.
My interpretation of that is, you can incorporate the software into your proprietary project, but that portion must remain open….so any modifications to the software must keep that license attached, forcing my changes to be open sourced.
Isn't this the reason people consider the GPL to be restrictive/viral? Because it forces modifications to be open sourced?
Here is a copy of the license:
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 copyright 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.
Best Answer
Not quite.
Here's the basic idea. As you pointed out, "you can incorporate the software into your proprietary project, but that portion must remain open" under the MIT license. If you have 100 features in your proprietary product, and one of them is based on MIT-licensed code, that's fine.
However, if you have 100 features in your product, and one of them is based on GPL-licensed code, the GPL forces you to open-source the entire rest of the product. That's why it's called a viral license: it doesn't stay in its own code, but "infects" the rest of your codebase as well.