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Comment by velcrovan | Hacker News Reader

It’s a bit disappointing to see MIT and BSD still being recommended in the “permissive license” category for new projects. Their shortcomings are pretty well known by this point, but this is a good summary: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/09/Deprecation-Notice...

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No amount of licensing solves the problem of software patents: trolls can sue anyone no matter what licenses you have.

Considering how many times author referenced BlueOak license, it seems like he had a license to promote.

Of course he had. Check https://blueoakcouncil.org/about Kyle Mitchell who wrote that MIT license deprecation article is also the one who developed Blue Oak license.

No, MIT license is not deprecated. Ton of FOSS projects use it and will continue to use it.

It’s not “deprecated” in any official sense, but it has several legal defects that in 2023 ought to remove it from consideration for use as a permissive license in nearly all cases.

> Kyle Mitchell who wrote that MIT license deprecation article is also the one who developed Blue Oak license.

OK, well, if that's not good enough for you: The other two Blue Oak board members listed at that site — Heather Meeker and Luis Villa — both have serious reputations in this field.

(Disclosure: Kyle Mitchell is a friend, and both a good lawyer and a good guy.)

The author has 42 licenses to promote, by my count.

The author is a copyright lawyer by trade as well a software developer so he understands both problem spaces; he identifies several glaring legal defects in the BSD and MIT licenses; and together with a group of other copyright lawyers developed a license that addresses all of those shortcomings. If I were in his shoes I would promote it too.

I've never heard of Blue Oak before now is there any legal reason why it's not more common?

It is not more common because popular software don't use it and there is no need to. We don't need yet another FOSS license. There are plenty of them serving different kinds of needs. The license is developed by the author of the link in parent comment so it's no wonder that they are promoting their own license every chance they get.

Can you identify a single other license that addresses all the shortcomings in the MIT license in a better way than the Blue Oak Model license?

Saying “we don’t need another license” is like saying we don’t need more software, since there is already plenty of software “serving different kinds of needs.” We create new tools to address specific concerns in a better way. What’s the problem?

No, there isn’t a legal reason why it’s not more common.

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