[License-review] License Approval Request: BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI
McCoy Smith
mccoy at lexpan.law
Tue May 20 14:36:34 UTC 2025
License approval request for BSD Open MPI license (SPDX:
BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI
<https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI.html>).
I'm submitting this as a legacy request, as I believe it qualifies as
such, although I also think it might be approvable as a "new" license. I
am submitting on behalf of the Linux Foundation (who is not the license
steward).
This license has been in use for at least 5 years (it appears to have
been used since circa 2004:
https://www.open-mpi.org/community/license.php
<https://www.open-mpi.org/community/license.php>), and looks to have
been used in more than 20 projects (SPDX lists two:
https://www.open-mpi.org/community/license.php
<https://www.open-mpi.org/community/license.php> and
http://www.netlib.org/lapack/LICENSE.txt
<http://www.netlib.org/lapack/LICENSE.txt>; there appear to be many
others on Github although that could be the result of inclusion of mpi
or lapack code in those projects).
A copy of the license text can be found above in the link to SPDX,
although I have reproduced it below as well. I’ve also attached an .odt
copy of the license text, for those of you (like me) who like to do
mark-ups and compares of documents.
The license complies with the Open Source Definition, and I specifically
affirm it meets OSD 3, 5, 6 and 9.
The license steward is likely the Open MPI project:
https://www.open-mpi.org/about/members/
<https://www.open-mpi.org/about/members/> Open MPI is an open source
Message Passing Interface implementation that is as Associated Project
<https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/open-mpi/> of Software in the Public
Interest <https://www.spi-inc.org/>. Contact information for Open MPI is
here: https://www.open-mpi.org/community/contact.php
<https://www.open-mpi.org/community/contact.php>
This license is an "allowed" license in Fedora, but is not discussed
either by Debian (as far as I can tell) or FSF.
The name for this license should be "BSD Open MPI" (or BSD 3-Clause Open
MPI"). The SPDX identifier is above.
I have not "tagged" this license as the tags are not yet published. I
think under the current system this would be "miscellaneous" or "special
purpose"; I hesitate to call it "redundant" relative to BSD-3-Clause for
the reasons below.
The gaps this license fills over the BSD-3-Clause (of which this license
is a variant, as it reproduces exactly the text of that license) are the
following:
The BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI adds the following language to BSD-3-Clause:
"The copyright holders provide no reassurances that the source code
provided does not infringe any patent, copyright, or any other
intellectual property rights of third parties. The copyright holders
disclaim any liability to any recipient for claims brought against
recipient by any third party for infringement of that parties
intellectual property rights."
That clause adds two potentially important improvement to BSD-3-Clause:
1. In the second sentence above, it adds a disclaimer of warranties of
non-infringement (or more accurately, a disclaimer of liability for
third-party infringement claims). Although disclaimer of warranties for
IP infringement claims are fairly common in most open source licenses
(for example, MIT, Apache 2.0), for some reason BSD-3-Clause does not
include one. This waiver could be important to provide protection to
licensors in those jurisdictions where such waivers are effective
(particularly ones where there is an implied warranty of
non-infringement, as there is in UCC 2-312(3) in the USA).
2. In the first sentence above, it provides a notice that there are no
assurances that there are no third-party IP infringement claims against
the code. This sort of statement is somewhat common in other
OSI-approved licenses (for example, EPL-2.0 in Section 2(c)). This sort
of notice (together with the disclaimer of liability for 3rd party
infringements) puts users on notice that they need to be aware that
other parties beyond the licensors might assert IP claims against the
licensed code.
This license has been through legal review by me.
BTW: Since I'm on the OSI Board and the License Review Committee, I am
recusing myself from the decision on approval of this license; I will
only comment upon it in response to questions about the request for
approval from others on the mailing list.
McCoy Smith
Lex Pan Law LLC
on behalf of the Linux Foundation
==================================================================================================================
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