Right to distribute modifications?

[Bjorn Reese]

I have a question about the right to distribute modifications. I am
not asking for legal advice.

I am the copyright holder of source code released under an MIT-like
license (for the sake of argument we can assume that the OSI approved
MIT license [1] was used.)

The license grants rights to "use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies". According to my
understanding this includes the right to distribute modifications,
as you've got the right to both modify and distribute.

I have been contacted by a project that wishes to use my source code
in their product. That product is also released under an MIT-like
license [2]. This license has added "distribute with modifications"
to its list of granted rights. According to the maintainer of the
project Richard Stallman had insisted on this addition (the Free
Software Foundation is the copyright holder on the source code of
this project), and has left the project members under the impression
that this grant has to be given explicitly.

The question is whether that grant has to be mentioned explicitly or
not?

[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html
[2] The exact license is below

/****************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 1998,2000,2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.              *
 *                                                                          *
 * 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, distribute with modifications, 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 ABOVE 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.                               *
 *                                                                          *
 * Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright   *
 * holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the     *
 * sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written       *
 * authorization.                                                           *
 ****************************************************************************/
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3