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

[Rob Landley]

On 10/09/2018 06:39 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 06:00:07PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
>> Discussion on this seems to have petered out.
>>
>> I checked and https://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0 is unchanged, (I.E.
>> starting with "Note: There is a license that is identical to the Free Public
>> License 1.0.0 called the Zero Clause BSD License." but otherwise using the Free
>> Public License name.)
>>
>> What's the next step in the process?
> 
> I think I was the OSI board member you spoke to at LCA (though it was
> two years ago, in Hobart). (Leaving aside the issue of graying hair, I
> don't think of my hair being "black", possibly because I grew up
> around a lot of people whose hair was darker, or closer to black, than
> mine.)

Yes, I dug up a blog entry that had your name in it after I wrote the first
message. Hello.

> Anyway: here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
> 
> My understanding is that what you'd like to see is: (a) the OSI
> license page for this license to give the 'official' name as Zero
> Clause BSD rather than Free Public License 1.0.0; (b) the URL for this
> page be presented as something like
> https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD.

That would be lovely, yes.

> I assume you don't object to a
> cross-referencing approach that would be the reverse of the current
> situation, though I don't think we do anything like that for any other
> license.

I have no objection to mentioning that OSI once called it by another name, I'd
just like the first hit when you google for '0BSD' to stop being your page
saying it isn't.

I'd like to clear up the perceived confusion about there being two licenses, and
the impression that what wikipedia calls a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_equivalent_license might have
something to do with the FSF's "call it Free Software, not Open Source" campaign
to promote copyleft.

I have evidence this is negatively impacting the adoption of the license.

> I think at this point we should primarily be looking at actual usage
> of each license name in the real world. Which license name, FPL or
> 0BSD, is in wider use? If 0BSD (or Zero Clause BSD) is a more widely
> used name for more actual code, I believe OSI should recognize that as
> the preferred name.

The github thread I linked to
(https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/464) was titled "Possibly
add 0BSD license". It was started by someone other than me, without my
knowledge, using the 0BSD name. The _only_ objection to github doing so (which
derailed the attempt) was the naming confusion. I was asked via email to comment
on the naming confusing, which is how I found out about the thread.

Christian Bundy, the person who submitted the license to OSI, was also asked
about the naming confusion and his contributions to the thread included the
quotes "we're comfortable using the 0BSD identifier on our license" and "we'll
be happy to stand behind any decision that's made (the same way that we support
SPDX in giving us the "0BSD" identifier)."

I'm unaware of any real-world use of the "Free Public License" name. Google for
"free public license" produced no relevant hits on the first 3 pages, but plenty
of confusion with other licenses on the first page alone, including:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_Free_Public_License
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

Meanwhile Android has shipped toybox ever since Android M, and I've been asked
by multiple people about applying it to their own projects. Here are a couple
projects using it I'd never heard of before I just googled for "0bsd" and looked
at the first 2 pages of hits:

https://nacho4d-nacho4d.blogspot.com/2016/08/license.html

https://git.janouch.name/p/sensei-raw-ctl/commit/5f4a442a96b3ccdef4f78be4790f09d1b7b995db

In 2015 I was asked by Samsung to submit the toybox license to SPDX, and did so
under the "Zero Clause BSD" name I'd used for it since 2013. The SPDX approval
process had already concluded and assigned the "0BSD" short identifier for it
before the license was ever submitted to OSI.

Here's my original submission to SPDX:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/spdx/2015-June/000974.html

Here's the timeline putting OSI's actions in context:

https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-December/001574.html

For more information, see the github thread.

Rob