Is "zero-clause BSD" a joke, or is it considered a legitimate license? If the latter, does it actually differ from the MIT license in anything other than name?
zero-clause BSD is essentially a modified MIT that doesn't even require attribution, so essentially a "public domain" like license.
it eschews attribution, making it just about the closest thing to a public-domain dedication that still retains the appropriate verbiage to hold up to legal scrutiny
In the US, simply saying "I hereby dedicate this work to the public domain." is as an effective, if not more effective, way to do that as any license. These licenses are just for countries like Germany that basically make it illegal to sell, gift, or release a copyright at all.
It's great feature that we don't need consider where authors locate
Presuming that 'MIT' was a typo: most BSD-licensed software doesn't use the original (4-clause) BSD license, most are under variants:
No, it wasn't a typo; the 0-clause BSD looks pretty similar to the MIT license, and from a cursory reading, it appears that the clauses are what makes the BSD license different from the MIT license. I was wondering if my reading is correct or if I've missed something.
MIT has several (very important) requirements that BSD-0 does not. MIT is more similar to BSD-2-clause. It requires the user to include the copyright notice and disclaimer in any distributions.
There's also another OSI approved "zero" license called MIT-0