[License-discuss] Free Public License/0 Clause BSD License with Zlib Warranty Disclaimer

[Nate Craun]

Hello All,

I was looking at the Free Public License/Zero Clause BSD License, and I
saw that its warranty disclaimer is a lot longer/more capitalized than
the zlib warranty disclaimer.

The Free Public License says:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL
WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR
BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS
SOFTWARE.

and the zlib license says:

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of this software.

So, I was wondering if it would be possible to use the Free Public
License permission statement with the zlib license warranty disclaimer
and still be equivalent to the original Free Public License's warranty
disclaimer.

The end result would be something like this, although I'm not sure if
the warranty disclaimer would go before or after the permission
statement, since it goes before the permission statement in the zlib
license, but after the permission statement in the Free Public License.
I'm not sure about the copyright statement either, since the Zero
Clause BSD License and zlib license includes it, but the Free Public
License does not.


Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of this software.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for
any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.


If they are not equivalent, then does that mean that users of the zlib
license are not adequately disclaiming their implied warranties? Since
zlib's license is an OSI approved license, I would think that it
*should* provide adequate warranty disclaiming, but I'm not a lawyer.

As long as the warranty disclaimers are equivalent, I think there's
some (small) advantage to this new form. It's easier to read because
it's shorter, and doesn't have a long paragraph of capitalized text.
There's also the license proliferation issue, but this license is so
permissive that it has no requirements, and so shouldn't cause any
confusion or incompatibility with other licenses.

I'd love to hear what people on this list think about this.

Best,

Nate Craun