普遍的MIT協議聲明原文如下：

Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>

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, 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, 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.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

中文解釋如下：

被許可人權利

特此授予任何人免費獲得本軟件和相關文檔文件（“軟件”）副本的許可，不受限制地處理本軟件，包括但不限于使用、復制、修改、合并 、發布、分發、再許可的權利， 被許可人有權利使用、復制、修改、合并、出版發行、散布、再許可和/或販售軟件及軟件的副本，及授予被供應人同等權利，惟服從以下義務。

被許可人義務

在軟件和軟件的所有副本中都必須包含以上著作權聲明和本許可聲明。

其他重要特性

此許可協議并非屬copyleft的自由軟件許可協議條款，允許在自由及開放源代碼軟件或非自由軟件（proprietary software）所使用。

MIT的內容可依照程序著作權者的需求更改內容。此亦為MIT與BSD（The BSD license, 3-clause BSD license）本質上不同處。

MIT許可協議可與其他許可協議并存。另外，MIT條款也是自由軟件基金會（FSF）所認可的自由軟件許可協議條款，與GPL兼容。