Relicense with `MIT-0` or `Unlicense`

[okuoku]

To support native code compiler + Visual Studio use-case, (unfortunately) we cannot use CC0-1.0 as license since Visual Studio limits their applicable usage to OSI-approved open source licensed software.

Current candidates are MIT-0 and Unlicense:

• https://opensource.org/license/mit-0/
• https://opensource.org/license/unlicense/

Legal review results are mixed: Some company says we always need a Copyright description thus we have to choose MIT-0 (or similar). Others say they're accepting public domain software.

For example, the stb chooses MIT and Unlicense https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/LICENSE .

(EDIT: How about BSD0? -- TypeScript uses this.)

[lassik]

MIT is the traditional license of choice in the Lisp community.

[okuoku]

Yup, as the MIT is the origin of AI lab... OTOH, Yuni implements some portions of R7RS to implement our own compatibility layer and as you might know, it's used by R7RS implementations like Guile and Akku-r7rs. To support such use case, we wanted to apply the license that closed to R7RS report itself -- that is considered as public domain.

Unlicense is the most popular OSI-approved public domain license. Current CC0-1.0 is not OSI-approved and it's illegal that compiling Yuni FFI stubs using Visual Studio build tools (that is popular among software vendors) without paid Visual Studio license. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/updates-to-visual-studio-build-tools-license-for-c-and-cpp-open-source-projects/ says:

you have the flexibility to install Visual Studio Build Tools for free.

but it's limited to "OSS" and in MS definition, OSS must be licensed with OSI-approved open source license.

MIT license requires(enforces) to display copyright attribution somewhere and sometimes it's simply impossible to comply with it (e.g. devices without displays nor paper manuals). That's why I choose MIT-0 here instead.

Some companies simply dislike public domain software used in their product. Another example is Fedora project: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RRYM3CLYJYW64VSQIXY6IF3TCDZGS6LM/ To support such companies we have to consider dual-licensing the code, for example MIT-0 and CC0-1.0.