[License-review] License Approval Request: BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI

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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