Question on OSD #5

[David Woolley]

Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
> the software license. If you give me BSD software and additionally
> make me sign an NDA that says I won't redistribute it, the software
> still is BSD. I just can't distribute it. 
> 
> The same goes for GPL software, although there the NDA also triggers
> the "no additional restrictions" clause.

Any copyleft licence would need such a clause.  As it is fundamental to 
such licences that the recipient should always have the unrestricted 
right to redistribute.

Whilst one might argue your position for a permissive pure licence, I 
believe you argue that civil law countries don't have pure licences, in 
which case I would have though that the NDA would have formed part of 
the overall licensing contract, and resulted in a whole that breached 
the principle that OSD compliant licences must permit re-distribution. 
One could also argue that the NDA was in breach of the rule about 
additional royalties, as there would be a potential to charge a fee to 
waive the NDA for a particular distribution.

For permissive licences, this is margineally academic, as the supplier 
can also add redistribution restrictions by varying the licence, but 
such a variant would not be open source.  (Ignoring for the moment 
whether re-licensing is really an additional agreement preserving the 
original licence.)


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David Woolley
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