[License-discuss] Is the OBM License OSD compatible?

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2017 at 05:19:44PM +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 06/01/17 17:09, Smith, McCoy wrote:
> > GPLv3 (and the variants, LGPLv3 and AGPLv3) do *not* permit
> > "Additional Terms" (despite the section header called "Additional
> > Terms");  they permit "Additional Permissions" which are defined in
> > the license, Sec 7, as "terms that supplement the terms of this
> > License *by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions*."
> 
> The section 7, titled "Additional Terms", permits "Additional
> Permissions" in the first two paragraphs, but also in the following
> paras permits 6 categories of other sorts of additional terms which are
> not necessarily entirely permissive. Section 7 b) through f) are clearly
> not entirely permissive if you read them. So the section heading is
> correct, and I believe your interpretation that everything envisaged by
> that section must be an Additional Permission is wrong.

That's correct. Section 7 authorizes 'additional permissions'
generally and a limited set of "non-permissive" additional
terms. Conceptually 7a through 7f were seen as categories of
'non-permissive' terms over and above the conditions of GPLv3 that do
not violate the general rule against 'further restrictions'. These
were designed to codify aspects of FSF interpretation of GPLv2
including license compatibility doctrine as well as extend it in some
ways (e.g. 7f is intended to provide a basis for Apache License 2.0
compatibility with GPLv3 by abstracting from the condition of Apache
License 2.0 section 9).

Richard