New OSI-approved licenses

[Rob Landley]

On 11/17/2015 12:51 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 01:32:44AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>>>> 2) Free Public License 1.0.0
>>>> Text of approved license contained within:
>>>> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
>>>
>>>  We have added as of v2.2 - http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html -  although it was submitted using a different name as suggested by the submitter (who I think said he authored the license… or at least seemed to know a lot about it’s origins and the suggested name, which we went with - see http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html for that thread).
>>>
>>> Would the OSI oppose the name we already went with??
>>
>> Hmm, I think this is really a case of two people independently
>> inventing approximately the same thing at about the same time, where
>> 'invention' means removing some language from an existing short
>> license.
> 
> Looks like Rob Landley was using it a year or more earlier:
> https://lwn.net/Articles/608082/
> 
> Decided to copy in Rob Landley here. Rob: the license contained herein
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
> was recently approved by the Open Source Initiative under the name
> 'Free Public License 1.0.0', and it has only now come to light (for
> me, or anyone associated with the OSI) that you have been using an
> essentially identical license (apart from presence/absence of an
> initial copyright notice) which you call 'Zero Clause BSD'.

I intend to keep using the name "Zero Clause BSD" because it's the
OpenBSD suggested template license with half a sentence removed. This
suggested template is linked from the first paragraph of:

http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html

According to that page the provenance if the license is actually an ISC
derivative, but since it's OpenBSD's license calling it a "BSD license"
seems justified.

The name I chose backs up the message "this is a BSD license, only very
slightly modified (only by removing text, not adding any)." The zero
also implies a similarity to creative commons zero, the public domain
variant of creative commons (which it is of course compatible with).

There are several existing public domain licenses, such as
unlicense.org. The advantage of BSD0 is that legal departments familiar
with "BSD licensed code" don't have to go through the full approval
process for a new license. If they're comfortable with BSD licensing,
this should be an easy sell, it's a minor variant of the existing
OpenBSD license template, just with half a sentence removed.

Calling it a "Free" license implies the Free Software Foundation is
involved (the old "free software" vs "open source" debate). The FSF is
on the pro-copyleft side of things, where zero clause bsd is "more BSD
than BSD" by being public domain. These diverge from BSD in opposite
directions, so the word "free" is actively misleading in this context,
warning legal departments to be wary instead of putting them at ease by
highlighting the similarity with OpenBSD's template as I'm trying to do.

I prefer the name that implies "this is a BSD license that acts like
Creative Commons Zero". Calling it "free" anything implies "The Free
Software Foundation is involved, be prepared to put up a fight", which
seems counterproductive.

> Richard

Rob