Permissions, conditions and limitations at a glance
Conditions
- None
Limitations
- LiabilityExpressly states that there is no liability for damages.
- WarrantyExpressly states that no warranty is provided.
Permissions, conditions and limitations are classified using data from choosealicense.com (GitHub, MIT License).
What kind of license is it?
Despite its name, 0BSD is not derived from BSD but from the ISC text, with the condition that "the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies" removed. Because it has zero conditional clauses, it is called "Zero Clause". It is an OSI-approved license, and Microsoft's TypeScript runtime helper library tslib uses 0BSD.
Conditions
None. It permits use, copying, modification and distribution for any purpose, with no obligation to keep a copyright notice or permission notice. It only contains a warranty and liability disclaimer.
How it differs from the Unlicense and CC0
- 0BSD: Keeps the copyright and permits everything through a license. Its interpretation is simple even in countries without a concept of public domain.
- Unlicense: Dedicates the work to the public domain, with a fallback permission for places where that is not possible.
- CC0: Waives rights to the extent permitted by law, and grants a fallback license where the waiver is not effective. It expressly excludes patent rights.
Common misconceptions
- "There is no notice requirement, so I can claim I wrote it" — The license simply does not require a notice; passing off someone else's work as your own may still amount to plagiarism or raise other legal issues.
- "0BSD is BSD 2-Clause with the clauses removed" — The text is based on the ISC-style template used by OpenBSD. The name "Zero Clause BSD" was given by its author (Rob Landley).
How to apply it
Put the text in LICENSE and fill in [year] and [fullname]. Because there is no notice requirement you may delete the copyright line, but many keep it as a record. The SPDX identifier is 0BSD.
When it fits
It suits code meant to be copied, such as snippets, examples and templates, and small helper libraries bundled into runtimes where requiring a notice in every app would be impractical.
Can 0BSD code go into another project?
General verdicts for taking code released under this license and distributing it combined into a project under each license below. See other combinations in the compatibility checker →
| Target project | Verdict | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Proprietary (closed-source) software | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| MIT | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| Apache-2.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| MPL-2.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| LGPL-2.1 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| LGPL-3.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| GPL-2.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| GPL-3.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
| AGPL-3.0 | Allowed | This license has no notice requirement, so the code can go anywhere. |
The content on this site is general information, not legal advice. For actual distribution, contracts or disputes, consult a lawyer or other qualified professional.