As per the documentation, http://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/userguide_single.html#archiveTasksNamingProperties, any archive task's baseName will default to project.name. This is apparently true iff the BasePlugin is applied somewhere, then it will run configureArchiveDefaults(). I can see that the archives are pulling actually pulling baseName from archivesBaseName, this is a fine config option, but the archive tasks need to work without the BasePlugin. Right now they'll just produce files named ".zip". There doesn't seem to be a compelling connection between project.name and the BasePlugin, it seems logical that archive tasks could default to project.name, since it's around and its immutable.

My users are looking for scripting replacements, and when I tell them they have to "apply plugin: 'java'" their knee jerk reaction is to say "oh this is a java build system, nevermind, I'll use something else."

This assumes that the BasePlugin is optional, if it's not, why isn't it just always applied then?

Example that should work:
<code>
task dist(type: Zip)

println "Project name: ${project.name}"
println "Base Name: ${dist.baseName}" // prints as null
<code>