That’s the problem with concisely written licenses, the legal world thrives on definitions and terms of art, and when you leave something open to interpretation you invite the probability that a nefarious (or even sufficiently amoral actor like a large corporation) actor will point to the language you use and interpret it differently.
To win any argument in a court of law you must now spend time and money to win the argument. Something an open source maintainer likely doesn’t have, and since the license doesn’t specify damages, there’s no way to even write in a penalty for failure to adhere such that a court of law would consider it under contract law, and then you have to prove damages.
At least in Virginia, each party pays their own lawyers fees, even if they win. You can only collect lawyers fees when statutes allow you to, or there has been sufficient bad faith from the other side that the court uses its own power to sanction.
Oh, and let’s say you win and somehow you are able to prove damages. Now you have to spend money to collect on the judgment. That’s money you’re not getting back.
The point here is that we’ve written software licenses as contracts that assume good faith and do not punish bad actors, when we would need to treat corporations as if they are bad actors and write licenses accordingly.
What they likely mean is that MS says "Good luck enforcing this. Have you met our legal team?"
Nothing they can't walk around, or drown you in legal fees while they smile.
Seems both you and Microsoft needs to actually read through the MIT license, it isn't that long or complicated :)
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
That part is even in it's own paragraph and everything, really hard to miss for anyone who even glances at the license.