The Right to Sublicense

The MIT license also grants the right to sublicense, a word missing entirely from the BSD license grant. Sublicensing is an important concept in open source licensing.

Referring back to the chain of title explanation earlier in Chapter 2, I described how contributions from many people can be combined into collective and derivative works, and how those works can in turn be used by others to create still more collective and derivative works. That is the very premise and promise of open source development. The ever lengthening chain of title is reflective of the robust creative energies of community development. A major open source software program may have a long chain of title by the time it arrives on your computer.

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