The clause here is copied from the X11 license and replaced references to the X Consortium with references to "the authors or copyright holders" as is used in the main block, which also refers to the X CONSORTIUM in the x11 license.

On the technical correctness front:

• We are the "MIT" license according to the link given in each source file, http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php And this text matches COPYING.

On the legal correctness front:

• You think license can be changed to be more restrictive, without the consent of copyright holders? Not sure where that bit of legal logic came from.

This pull request is a license change.

Ugh, so the link is inconsistent with the license name in the files. Seems we have been dual-licensing...

The text at the link labelled "MIT" matches word-for-word the text in the COPYING file. I don't see anything inconsistent.

NAK. This changes license text. Further, this change makes our COPYING now inconsistent with the given URL in each file.

The terms of the X11 and MIT license are the same, but the X Consortium for its own software adds a clarification about usage of its name and trademarks

"Except as contained in this notice, the name of the X Consortium shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from the X Consortium. X Window System is a trademark of X Consortium, Inc."

In the case of bitcoin there is no organization that protects its name or trademarks. And, thinking about it, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to change "X Consortium" liberally to "the name of the authors or copyright holders" .

So, NACK from me too. I'd vote to just keep this as it is, and enforce a consistent copyright message (without the /X11, but the same link to COPYING and http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) for new files.

Well we can change the header from X11, but that sounds more like a license change than this.

@jgarzik There is no single MIT license. There are various ones. We pointed to one (MIT/X11), but had text for another (Expat, often referred to as "the" MIT license as it is the most common).

There was some IRC discus sion about this. Jeff's point was that the name of the license doesn't matter - the text in COPYING and the one referred to by a URL in the actual source files would have more legal value. That sounds reasonable to me, but IANAL.

@TheBlueMatt MIT/X11 seems pretty unambiguous to me. The newer MIT license and the X11 license have the same terms, word-for-word. The trademark clarification is not part of the license terms itself.

Seems consensus on IRC is that changing the header text to point to the MIT/Expat in COPYING makes more sense than changing COPYING to be MIT/X11.

IRC consensus was to change the 'MIT/X11' in the headers to just 'MIT' (and save four bytes in the process). Sure, MIT may be ambigious, but for details about the license people should refer to the terms in COPYING or the provided link.
I want to to do this at least for new files and new copyright headers.