Mono XSP License

Question

First of all I'm sorry for such a question, I look over the internet and google searches but there so many different ideas out there. In a mail-list I actually see that people claim that one need to buy Mono license to use it in a commercial tool.

Can I use Mono XSP in a commercial tool, does licensing permits that?

I'm not good with reading legal documents. And trying to figure what this exactly means. In the XSP package I've got this COPYING file:

Copyright (c) 2002, 2003, 2004 Novell, Inc. and the individuals

listed on the ChangeLog entries.

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.

My understanding is "Yes I can use and modify it as soon as I leave a copy of this file with my distribution"

Am I right?

Answer 1

Yes, you are right. That's the MIT License - or see this Wikipedia entry on the topic.

Answer 2

In a mail-list I actually see that people claim that one need to buy Mono license to use it in a commercial tool.

It depends on what part of Mono you are using and what you intend to do with. XSP, like all of the Mono class libraries, is MIT, which mean you can pretty much do whatever with it as long as you keep the copyright headers.

The Mono runtime however is LGPL. So if you are planning on distributing it as part of your product, you need to ensure you fulfill the LGPL obligations. If you cannot, that is when you need to obtain a commercial Mono license.

See http://www.mono-project.com/License for details.