Even if the subject involves the MIT licence, my question is not strictly limited to that license.
Working for a private company, I found in their private repository some projects apparently licensed under the MIT licence.
Looking at the configuration files for those project I had the impression that most part of them are the output of a generic initialization script or pasted from a quick-start found on the Internet; some fields have not been tailored to the project as it's reasonable to expect; one of those fields specify, as licence, MIT; nowhere in the project there is the text of the MIT licence (nor any other licence).
That company never released open source code; the person that wrote those projects has left the company and is not currently reachable for comments; people working with that person at the time of the development guess that those source code were never publicly released and his contract probably didn't allow to use an open source licence.
Until he can comment on the code he wrote: 1) how should be treated that code (open or closed source)? 2) what if confirmed that his contract didn't allow to use an open source licence?
Would it change something if he would say he didn't want to use the MIT?