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I asked rms and Hal Abelson about this a few years ago. Stallman said: > The term "MIT license" is a confusion. It is used to describe two different licenses

I asked rms and Hal Abelson about this a few years ago. Stallman said: > The term "MIT license" is a confusion. It is used to describe two different licenses; see https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html. We call them the X11 license and the Expat license. To distinguish them, we do not use the term "MIT license". The X11 license was, as far as I know, first used by X11. I don't know how it was written -- the question is not interesting to me. Thanks Richard. Hal recalled that it was drafted by Karen Hershey at the request of the Technology Transfer Office. Regretfully I don't have a copy of his original response.

ghaff 4y ago
Right. The modern MIT license approved by the OSI is the same as the license used for the Expat XML parser library beginning in about 1998. It's similar, but not identical, to the X11 license. No one seems to be sure how the Expat license ended up as the MIT license. That said, it's more than a bit pedantic not to use the term "MIT license" given that all the licenses in that stream are quite similar and certainly in the same permissive spirit.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > it's more than a bit pedantic not to use the term "MIT license" From Stallman? Who would have guessed.