[License-review] License Review: Modified 0BSD License (Maintenance-Required)

[Rob Landley]

On 3/17/26 05:56, Vicentte Felipe wrote:
> Dear OSI License Review Committee,
> ​I am formally submitting the Modified 0BSD License for review and approval
> against the Open Source Definition (OSD).

I created 0BSD in 2013, got it approved by SPDX, walked it through the 
github choose-a-license approval process, and I am 100% opposed to this.

Please call it something else unrelated to 0BSD. (How about 0ISC?)

 > ​Following previous feedback regarding trademark concerns,

Copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets are all DIFFERENT THINGS. 
They are different areas of law.

0BSD is JUST a copyright license. If you want to license patents, put a 
patent license alongside it. If you want to mess with trademarks, add a 
trademark license alongside it.

> THE MAINTENANCE OBLIGATION (THE VICENTTE DUTY):
> Unlike the standard 0BSD license, this software is NOT provided "as-is."
> The Author(s) and/or Distributor(s) accept an affirmative obligation to:
> 1. Review and address reported technical defects and bugs.
> 2. Use best efforts to provide fixes for issues that impair the software’s
>     intended functionality.

The entire POINT of 0BSD was to be a simple public domain equivalent 
license that was layman-comprehensible enough for all the developers 
(from qmail through "the most popular license on github is no license") 
who were refusing to license their code AT ALL (or trying to do ad-hoc 
public domain declarations) to maybe get talked into using this thing, 
while at the same time getting rubber stamped by large corporations who 
had already accepted 2, 3, and 4 clause BSD licenses and went "oh yeah, 
another one" and let it in.

This is NOT THAT. Please don't muddy the waters. If you want to create a 
new license, by all means do so. But you clearly have no comprehension 
of what the POINT of this license was, nor why it gained adoption.

> I believe this modification maintains the spirit of open source while

No it fucking does not. I can walk away from my open source projects at 
any time. I can (and do!) ignore patches to make toybox work on windows 
because I don't want to go there. I do not OWE you fixes for free in 
perpetuity! Your "duty" is more onerous than the GPL's "virality".

And how the HELL do you square the circle of 80% of the original license 
by weight being a disclaimer that this thing is in ANY WAY fit for 
purpose (caveat emptor and then some) with "I solemnly swear to use my 
best efforts to fix any reported bugs for free, forever".

(And a bug is anything the reporter thinks it is including new features 
or a different user interface or just me explaining that they don't know 
how to use it or we intentionally didn't support that input format and 
are not going to start now...)

Just... no.

> providing a modern framework for professional stewardship. I look forward
> to the committee’s feedback.

Hello no.

At the VERY least, please call it something else, unrelated to 0BSD.

Rob