Despite the claims of other replies that this is fine, I actually wonder if it is. Let's examine the MIT license and the effect on the software before and after:
> 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,
Ok, so if I grabbed anything before the license change I can do whatever I like with it.
> 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,
So, the relicense is allowed, but...
> 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.
So the new software even when AGPL-licensed is still MIT licensed right? It just has another license that also applies. So I think realistically, from a legal perspective I could still do whatever I want with it.
"to deal in the Software without restriction"
AGPL applies a set of restrictions that apply to the dealings that you have with the software. These restrictions hence do not apply to any parts of the software that are still MIT licensed.
To make this effective, the AGPL-licensed software would specifically have to call out the pieces that are not the MIT licensed software and are only AGPL-licensed. That seems like a lot of effort and would be difficult to maintain.
To demonstrate the absurdity, let's take a stupid hypothetical change - add an extra set of parentheses to a variable assignment. `i = 42;` becomes `i = (42);`. What is the license that applies to that line? - It's a substantial copy of the the software, that has been sublicensed. I'd say it's still MIT licensed (but IANAL).
My personal perspective on this is to avoid the GPL in any form in software __that I write__ (though I'm happy to consume it) and stick with MIT/Apache when possible. I'm still trying to understand if this perspective has merit, but it works for me for now.
> 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,
Ok, so if I grabbed anything before the license change I can do whatever I like with it.
> 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,
So, the relicense is allowed, but...
> 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.
So the new software even when AGPL-licensed is still MIT licensed right? It just has another license that also applies. So I think realistically, from a legal perspective I could still do whatever I want with it.
"to deal in the Software without restriction"
AGPL applies a set of restrictions that apply to the dealings that you have with the software. These restrictions hence do not apply to any parts of the software that are still MIT licensed.
To make this effective, the AGPL-licensed software would specifically have to call out the pieces that are not the MIT licensed software and are only AGPL-licensed. That seems like a lot of effort and would be difficult to maintain.
To demonstrate the absurdity, let's take a stupid hypothetical change - add an extra set of parentheses to a variable assignment. `i = 42;` becomes `i = (42);`. What is the license that applies to that line? - It's a substantial copy of the the software, that has been sublicensed. I'd say it's still MIT licensed (but IANAL).
My personal perspective on this is to avoid the GPL in any form in software __that I write__ (though I'm happy to consume it) and stick with MIT/Apache when possible. I'm still trying to understand if this perspective has merit, but it works for me for now.