Can I just download and execute a C project on GitHub licensed under the MIT license without copying that license somewhere? For example, download a single file, g it and run? What about bash scripts in this repo? There are considered source code, not binary. Can I also execute them without any attribution?

CodePudding user response：

The MIT license says no

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

That categorically says all copies. It doesn't matter if you're the only person with access to a copy.

But in practice?

When you execute a file, your computer copies its contents (or, at least, "substantial portions" of its contents) into RAM. It doesn't copy the license file into RAM - it doesn't even know about the license file.

I'd argue that if all you're doing is copying a .c file that happens to be MIT-licensed off of GitHub, and compiling and executing it to see what it does, you're fine - especially if you know you're going to delete it immediately afterwards.

Where you'd get into trouble is if you set up something using that executable (or source file) sans license, and then later you forget about how that file got there and send it to someone, even privately, for example as a way to share a solution to something, or someone else comes across it by any other means (e.g. if it's on a shared server).

In any case, the safest thing to do would be to just clone the Git repo and run it from there.