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

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Fri Oct 19 16:46:59 UTC 2018


On 10/19/2018 04:22 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 10/18/2018 08:23 PM, Rob Landley wrote:
> We need to address some questions here first.
> 
> 1) Does OSI have a concern in not approving license *names* that are
> derivative in a potentially misleading way?

> I've argued that the answer to (1) is "yes".

What's "misleading" is OSI trying to push a nonstandard name for an existing
license after SPDX had already approved the existing name for the license, which
predated that approval by years, a name derived from OpenBSD's explicit
endorsement of the license, and which was cleared with the longest-serving
maintainer of the original BSD project.

What's "misleading" is using a name implying an association with the Free
Software Foundation and thus copyleft (I.E. "Free Software vs Open Source") for
a public domain equivalent license that's intentionally as far from copyleft as
you can get in this space.

OSI is doing the misleading here. My request to you at the start of this thread
was to stop.

I don't care whether you delete your page or correct your page to match SPDX and
existing historical usage. As far as I'm concerned they're equivalent actions.
OSI's explicit lack of endorsement didn't slow CC0 adoption, but you don't go
"It's actually The Fruitbat Extra-Viral License" either.

Please stop misnaming this license.

Rob



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