[License-discuss] [License-review] Please rename "Free Public License-1.0.0" to 0BSD... again.

Tue Apr 6 13:36:16 UTC 2021

My point is that it was submitted to OSI (starting here:
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2
015-August/002438.html ending here:
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2
015-November/002617.html ) under the Free Public License 1.0.0 name, and
erasing that name is going to make it difficult for people trying to
understand the approval history, as there will be none for the "0BSD
license" if you don't at least have a pointer to the approval name.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On
> Behalf Of Rob Landley
> Sent: Tuesday, April 6, 2021 2:01 AM
> To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] Please rename "Free Public
> License-1.0.0" to 0BSD... again.
> 
> On 4/5/21 10:23 AM, McCoy Smith wrote:
> > Isn't the problem here that this license was submitted initially for
> > approval under "Free Public License-1.0.0"
> 
> Not "initially", no. I initially submitted it for approval to SPDX after
it had
> been merged into Android M, and both occured before OSI ever heard of it.
> 
> In 2011 I relicensed my toybox project from GPL 2.0 to the OpenBSD
> suggested template license, calling it a BSD license when I did so:
> 
> https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/3f998bb657bc
> 
> In 2013 I simplified it to a public domain equivalent license:
> 
> https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/9ee76527f0fa
> 
> I then got Kirk McKusick's permission to call the result "Zero Clause BSD"
> when I met him at Ohio LinuxFest in October 2013. and started publicly
using
> that name for it:
> 
> https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/1748bdb6bfe4
> 
> It was merged into Android in December 2014, under that license by that
> name:
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/629362/
> 
> 6 months later I was asked by a large phone manufacturer to officially
submit
> the license to SPDX to simplify their internal processes, which I did:
> 
> https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-
> June/001443.html
> 
> Then OSI showed up 5 months later (11 months after it had been merged
> into Android and 10 months after Linux Weekly News had covered its merger
> into Android), to say "I can't see OSI wanting to" and "I personally would
be
> opposed to", and we started arguing about it:
> 
> https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-
> November/001568.html
> 
> (That was the first objection I ever encountered that this wasn't really a
BSD
> license: after 4 years of publicly using it, giving a talk about the
project at the
> embedded linux conference in 2013 that described the licensing at length
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0 and a dedicated licensing
> talk at the conference where I met McKusick
> https://ia803008.us.archive.org/34/items/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-
> Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3
> and nobody ever said "I object that the license you're using is not a BSD"
> before OSI looking for a reason not to change their existing decision. The
> reason I asked McKusick for permission to call it "zero clause BSD" was
> because I wasn't part of the BSD community and was creating a new member
> of the family alongside "4/3/2", not because the license I was using
hadn't
> come to me through OpenBSD's website. I wanted it blessed by an old hand,
> and it was, in 2013.)
> 
> I posted a timeline like this as part of the 2015 OSI-on-SPDX argument:
> 
> https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-
> December/001574.html
> 
> And I posted that last link in the 2018 OSI naming decision thread when I
> came here to ask OSI to eliminate the market confusion:
> 
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
> review_lists.opensource.org/2018-October/003609.html
> 
> > therefore in order to understand
> > the debate about the approval,
> 
> Why would they need to? OSI got caught in a
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/
> style issue and at the time had no procedure to change an existing
decision.
> That's the main reason (they stated at the time) that fixing it was a big
deal:
> they had to come up with a new procedure.
> 
> > one would at least need to reference that name so that anyone
> > interested in the discussion about approval would know to look under
> > that name?
> 
> You don't have to know any name other than 0BSD and that it was approved
> by SPDX and OSI to find the actual discussions in the web archives, and I
> know this because I just Googled the above links.
> 
> There's a bunch of great history in those approval threads about related
> issues such as why CC0's initial submission wasn't approved by OSI:
> 
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
> review_lists.opensource.org/2018-October/003627.html
> 
> But that information does not belong on the 0BSD summary page either.
> 
> I myself have given summaries of this information in plenty of other
places,
> such as the github approval process for adding 0BSD to choose-a-license,
> mostly in two chunks, as a conversation with Christian Bundy who submitted
> it under the other name to OSI:
> 
> https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/464#issuecomment-
> 289236817
> https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/464#issuecomment-
> 289526758
> 
> The reason that github approval process failed at the time was the "Market
> confusion" over the two names, which is why I came here to OSI to resolve
> that in 2018, which resulted in 0BSD successfully being added to github:
> 
> https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/pull/643
> 
> Which happened precisely because OSI had changed its page, allowing
> wikipedia to change, which stopped causing confusion that prevented
license
> adoption.
> 
> There are now twenty five thousand repositories on github using 0BSD:
> 
> https://github.com/search?q=license%3A0bsd&type=Repositories&ref=advs
> earch&l=&l=
> 
> And that search is _not_ including forks.
> 
> > I'm not sure this is a problem that OSI created.
> 
> I am sure. I was there. More to the point, it is a problem OSI decided to
fix,
> but it's not currently fixed. Here is the 2018 decision:
> 
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
> review_lists.opensource.org/2018-November/003830.html
> 
> > The OSI board has decided to rename the Free Public License 1.0.0 to
> > "Zero-Clause BSD". The opensource.org website will be updated in due
> > course.
> >
> > We did this to address concerns about potential confusion over and
> > inconsistency surrounding the use of multiple names for the same
> > license text.
> >
> > The original submitter of the FPL, Christian Bundy, indicated in
> > private communication that he did not object to the renaming.
> 
> OSI announced a decision to fix the problem and a rationale for that
> decision.
> Not "dual name": removing second name because multiple names bad.
> Unfortunately the first fix OSI implemented was incomplete, and over time
> the band-aid came off.
> 
> You're now arguing OSI can't fix the problem because then people wouldn't
> know there had been a problem.
> 
> > Also: it looks like this license was being called Free Public License
> > 1.0.0 elsewhere several years ago, so I'm not sure it's OSI that did
> > the renaming (or improper naming).
> > https://tldrlegal.com/license/free-public-license-1.0.0#summary
> 
> No, they got that from OSI. That kind of feedback loop propagating
> misinformation is called "citogenesis":
> 
> https://xkcd.com/978/
> 
> It's also what happened to wikipedia earlier this year, and even seems to
> have been what occured WITHIN the OSI website, where someone saw the
> historical note and moved the information into the title. That is why it
needs
> to be removed entirely (consistent with the 2018 decision, and the removal
> of the old URL to the license summary page under the old name), so it
> doesn't happen again in a couple years.
> 
> Part of my research back in 2015 was attempting to confirm that no
software
> had ever shipped under the "Free Public License". It's hard to prove a
> negative, but I couldn't find any: it was proposed for use in new
software,
> but had not BEEN used by any software. Meanwhile Android M including
> toybox shipped October 5,
> 2015 (a month before an OSI representative showed up on the SPDX list),
> with an annual sales volume of one billion units. (That doesn't make it
> "better", but at least in theory makes it easier to notice its existence.)
> 
> I repeated that search during the 2018 thread:
> 
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
> review_lists.opensource.org/2018-October/003609.html
> 
> This issue has been re-litigated in 2015, 2018, and you're making the same
> objections in 2021. Can OSI please fully retire the "Free Public 1.0.0"
name so
> we don't have to do this again in 2024?
> 
> Thank you for your time, sorry the reply is so long.
> 
> Rob
> 
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