[License-discuss] Pars pro toto: a fundamental(?) lack in (MIT licensed) (jquery) java-script packages?

[Reincke, Karsten]

Question: Is it really necessary to add the MIT license to jquery for using this javascript library compliantly?

Background:

Javascript is a script language. Such libraries are embedded into our html pages (normally) for enabling the browsers of our customers to modify our html pages directly on their own computers (client-sidedly). So, we might say that Javascript libraries are distributed, namely in the form of source code.

As an example, let us take the famous and very widely used jquery library ( https://jquery.com/ ) as. It is 'maintained' by an organization ( https://jquery.org/ ). It is licensed under the MIT license ( https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/master/MIT-LICENSE.txt ). Like all other instances of the MIT licenses with a customized copyright notice, it contains the requirement: 

"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

If one downloads this package from the official download page ( https://jquery.com/download/ ), one unfortunately receives a package (a flat text file, even in its' compressed version) which does contain "the above copyright notice", but does not contain "this permission notice". Instead of this, it only offers a link to a license interpretation ( http://jquery.org/license/ ), being inserted into the first commenting lines. 

Based on these facts, we tend to conclude, that each user, who embeds jquery into his own pages, has manually to add "this permission notice" into that "copy" of jquery to which he links his pages - what probably means to add the complete license text. But - as far as we can see - this is 'not so often practiced' - perhaps because asking for that seems to be a kind of nitpicking.

Nevertheless: if we want to take the open source licenses really seriously, if we want to act compliantly and to fulfill the open source license conditions very thoroughly, then - as far as we can see for the moment - we have to add the license retroactively. Indeed, currently we are testing concrete solutions to do so ( http://opensource.telekom.net/oscad/fileadmin/js/jquery-1.5.2.js ). But from a viewpoint of a programmer, this is a suboptimal solution: Modifying an already tested component only for adding the license text is an unnecessary source of error.

Therefore, we want to ask: 

Are we right? Do we really have to add the MIT license to an MIT licensed package which does not contain this license? Or is there any way to distribute the library to our 3rd. parties in exact that form we received from jquery?

Many thanks for your guiding comments.

PS: As far as we can see, there are at least some other javascript libraries which also do not contain all elements being required by their own licenses. So, your answers might also influence the compliant use of these other tools.

---
Deutsche Telekom AG
Products & Innovation
Karsten Reincke, PMP(r)
Senior Expert
Open Source Review Board - T&P/A&S/TM
T-Online-Allee 1
64295 Darmstadt
Tel.: +49 6151 680 - 8941
Fax.: +49 6151 680 - 2529
E-Mail k.reincke at telekom.de
http://www.telekom.de/

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