How to put the theme's MIT license information on my website?

Greetings,

I’m trying to build my first website with Hugo. I would like to use the theme “Hugo Scroll” which has the MIT License.

My question now would be where to put the required license information (the copyright tag and the license permission notice) on my website?
(I searched for this topic but could’nt find an answer)

Thank you very much for your answers!

Best regards

If you were to transfer the theme’s source code to another party, you would need to include the license (copyright notice, permissions, and disclaimers).

When you serve your site on the web, you are not transferring the source code to another party, so there is no need to display any portion of the license, including the copyright.

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Thank you very much for your answer!

If I understand correctly, I don’t have to include the license information on my website (that is hosted on a hosting provider), even if I want to use the website commercially?

1 Like

See my previous response.

Read this:

https://tldrlegal.com/license/mit-license

  • Putting your site online for people to see is “distribution”
  • Changing the theme and selling it to somebody must always include the license files in the theme directory. There probably is already a LICENSE.md, keep it there.
  • The whole “including” part (include license, include copyright) is for the original theme. Always keep the license, and if the developer adds some form of header as a comment to the theme files then leave it there. If you remove for instance a copyright line in the footer of the theme - MIT allows that, but you still have to keep the LICENSE.md there. You typically override themes by adding a file with the same name in your own root layouts folder and change the contents there.

Isn’t legal (licensing) advice and politics off topic for this forum?

Also OT answer since legal advice is not what the OP requested, rather a technical, ‘how do I put a notice I think I need on my site?’

This is not a legal advise. It’s an explanation of a license. That license is quite clear for people who know what it means. The problem is, that (especially in Europe) this whole licensing and privacy thing is over the top in regards of what is legal and what not. I have customers who have a simple private blog fretting about the terms and conditions of how they are allowed to say the name of their medication on their blog. Honestly… it’s going over board with this whole “legalese” thing.

MIT License allows you to have a website with that theme. Commercial or Private. No need to say “I am using XY theme”. If you want to sell your site you have to disclose that you are using that theme. That’s all.

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