Zero Clause BSD (0BSD)

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Fri Jun 12 19:01:47 UTC 2015


I'm told I should contact you about registering Toybox's "zero clause
bsd" license for an official 0BSD acronym/abbreviation.

The license text itself (paragraphs 2 and 3 here):

  https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/master/LICENSE

Is 2 clause BSD with the removal of half a sentence:


https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/ee86b1d8e25cb0ca9d418b33eb0dc5e7716ddc1e

This simplification makes the license function as a public domain
license (such as unlicense.org or creative commons zero), specifically
it means that combining works from multiple sources allows the license
text to collapse together, so you don't wind up with nonsense such as
Android's dozens of concatenated license copies for toolbox:

https://github.com/android/platform_system_core/blob/master/toolbox/NOTICE

(I asked why they had multiple copies of _identical_ license text, and
they said the copyright dates had changed so a strict reading of the
"copy exactly" part of the license meant... Don't laugh, the
"about->license" pulldown in the kindle paperwhite has over _300_pages_
of this nonsense. It's a chronic issue with bsd-alikes.)

So yeah, zero clause BSD. In toybox. Is there a form I should fill out?

Rob


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