Re: Official Listing of the curl License at Open Source Initiative (OSI)

Thank you for your permission and for the many reasons in favor of the 
current license.
I will submit the license to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as soon as 
possible.

Best regards

Chris



> On Tue, 3 Feb 2026, Chris via curl-library wrote:
>
>> I would like to have the curl license listed with the Open Source 
>> Initiative (OSI) (opensource.org). After going through the approval 
>> process, the curl license will be considered an OSI Approved License. 
>> The OSI will thus confirm that it is an open source license.
>
> Excellent! I mean we all knew it already, but getting it publicly 
> confirmed like that feels good and appropriate. Thanks for doing this.
>
>> The first point is permission to have the curl license officially 
>> listed at Open Source Initiative (OSI). Can someone grant me official 
>> permission?
>
> I suppose that should be me, and yes you have my permission to have it 
> listed by the Open Source Initiative. I think that is in everyone's 
> best interest.
>
>> I would like to address the second point here based on the feedback 
>> from my initial contact with the OSI. The curl project itself refers 
>> to the SPDX listing, where curl is listed as a standalone license.
>
> Yes, since SPDX added it as its own license identifier that seems to 
> be the most accurate SPDX name to use.
>
>> I would like to ask whether there are plans to change the license to 
>> a full MIT license.
>
> There are no such plans and I don't think anyone has asked us to in 
> the last twenty years.
>
>  - we have used this license for a long time by now
>  - it does not seem to hamper adoption or be a problem to users nor
>    contributors
>  - changing the license is work we can avoid
>  - changing the license causes ripple effects everywhere, which I 
> think we
>    should only trigger if it is important
>

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