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

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Rob Landley (rob at landley.net):

> Last year there was a discussion of Github adopting 0BSD, which was
> derailed by the name confusion.
> 
>   https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/issues/464
> 
> That thread contains a discussion between myself (who uses 0BSD in
> toybox and got SPDX approval under the original name) and the person
> who sent the license to OSI under a different name after SPDX had
> already approved 0BSD.
> 
> Unfortunately, due to the name confusion, Github took no action on the
> request.  Similarly wikipedia reproduces this confusion in its
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_equivalent_license page.
> There are multiple other examples of this negatively impacting the
> adoption of the license.
> 
> I copied my two contributions to the above github thread to my blog,
> with slightly cleaned up formatting. They explain the issue at length:
> 
>   http://landley.net/notes-2017.html#26-03-2017
> 
>   http://landley.net/notes-2017.html#27-03-2017

I applaud you for taking this very useful step, Rob, and appreciate
Bruce having spoken to encourage OSI to certify 0BSD.  FWIW, I heartily
concur.  This licence is clearly well drafted, non-duplicative, and so
on.

I'm actually about to revise my
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html page,
to strongly recommend 0BSD for anyone seeking maximally permissive
licensing  (It already says 'Rob Landley's BSD Zero Clause License
[link] is also excellent if obscure', but I can do better than that.)


Please pardon a bit of legal pedantry, but 0BSD is not 'equivalent to
placing code in the public domain' (as you say on
https://landley.net/toybox/license.html and elsewhere).  Copyright title 
continues to exist in the abstract ownable property in question from the
date of creation to when copyright expires -- whereas the defining trait 
of actual PD is ownable title having expired or been expunged.  You
might feel that this distinction doesn't matter:  We would all hope this
is the case.  The assurance third-party reusers have that they aren't
committing copyright torts is that they're doing so in good-faith
reliance on a copyright notice with permissions grant, knowing they're
either inside the copyright runtime but exercising that grant or past
the copyright runtime in which case the work is _truly_ public domain.

And another reason this isn't equivalent to PD is that the legal
obligation[1] to retain the copyright notice (e.g., the 'Copyright (C)
2006 by Rob Landley <rob at landley.net>' example on your toybox page)
until copyright expires -- which for reasons mentioned above is for
everyone's benefit.  

Yes, we get that coders would like to magick all of this hassle away --
but wishing doesn't make it so.  Your licence, CC0, MIT License, 
ISC License, and Fair License are IMO about the closest one can safely
get that I've so far seen.


[1] In the USA, covered by 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b).

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