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

[Bruce Perens]

This is such a simple request, I don't see why OSI needs to hold it up any
longer.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 5:51 AM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
>


-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering
Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder,
Open Source Initiative
President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom
Initiative.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20181015/f717e77e/attachment-0001.html>