[License-review] [new license] Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0

[Stefano Maffulli]

Hello folks,
the Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0
<https://opensource.org/license/blue-oak-model-license/>  was approved and
it's now published on OSI's website.  The board minute hasn't been
published yet but the link is already there (it will stop 404ing when the
minutes are approved officially at the next board meeting ... this is a bug
in our process  :) )

cheers,
stef


On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 3:15 AM Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:

> I hereby submit the Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0 for OSI’s consideration
> as a new license. It is just under five years old, so not exactly “new”,
> but I have been asked by a number of people in the Javascript community to
> submit it, as it is used by a critical dependency and their policy requires
> OSI-approved licenses.
>
> # Describe what gap not filled by currently existing licenses that the
> new license will fill.
>
> While preparing the first version of the Blue Oak Council permissive
> license list, council members (including myself and other attorneys
> specialized in open source) ended up trading notes about the features of a
> good permissive license. No existing license boasted all of those features,
> particularly including plain language drafting and a strong patent grant,
> so we wrote this one.
>
> We wrote at more length about the license’s benefits in the initial
> announcement, which I will avoid duplicating here:
> https://blueoakcouncil.org/2019/03/06/model.html
>
> # Compare it to and contrast it with the most similar OSI-approved
> license(s).
>
> We feel that the license is:
>
> - easier to read, and more legally explicit with regards to patents and
> cure provisions, than the traditional “academic” permissives like MIT
> <https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html>, BSD
> <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause.html>, or ISC
> <https://spdx.org/licenses/ISC.html>
>
> - shorter (~ 1/5th as long) and more permissive than Apache 2.0
> <https://spdx.org/licenses/Apache-2.0.html>
> # Describe any legal review the license has been through, including
> whether it was drafted by a lawyer.
>
> The license was drafted by me and other experience open source attorneys.
> It did not otherwise undergo a public vetting prior to publication.
>
> # Affirmatively state that the license complies with the Open Source
> Definition, including specifically affirming it meets OSD 3, 5, 6 and 9.
>
> I believe that the license complies with the OSD, including 3, 5, 6, and 9.
>
> # Identify what projects are already using the license.
>
> This submission was prompted because the license is used in:
> https://www.npmjs.com/package/path-scurry (downloaded 10 million times a
> week)
> https://www.npmjs.com/package/jackspeak (downloaded 9 million times a
> week)
>
> Both of these are dependencies of the https://www.npmjs.com/package/glob project
> (downloaded 126 million times a week)
>
> In turn, three of the top five packages in the OpenJS “Impact” list
> (Appium, Electron, and Node.js) depend on glob. As a result, OpenJS
> Foundation approached me and asked me to submit the license to OSI. (I am
> doing this as a favor, and am not being compensated for my time.)
>
> GitHub search additionally identifies about 2,000 files containing the
> license string (which may or may not map to packages using the license).
>
> # Provide the identity and contact details of the license steward, if
> known, and of the submitter. The OSI will try to get in touch with the
> license steward if the license submitter is not the steward.
>
> Blue Oak Council (https://blueoakcouncil.org/about) is the steward. I,
> Luis Villa, am on the board and drafting team of the Blue Oak Council, and
> am serving as the contact for this submission.
>
> # Provide any additional information that the submitter believes would be
> helpful for license review. For example, approval of the license by Debian,
> the FSF or the Fedora Project would be relevant to the review process.
>
> The license is allowed by Fedora:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/allowed-licenses/
>
> # Provide a unique name for the license, preferably including the version
> number.
>
> Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0
>
> # If any exist, provide the unique identifier by other projects, like SPDX
> or ScanCode.
>
> The SPDX license identifier is Blue-Oak-1.0.0.
> https://spdx.org/licenses/preview/BlueOak-1.0.0.html
>
> # Identify any proposed tags for the license (when available; see below
> regarding tagging).
>
> As far as I know these are not yet available.
>
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