[License-review] For Approval: GPL-3+-with-whonix-additional-terms - GPLv3 with improved, legal protections as per GNU GPL version 3 section 7

[Richard Fontana]

On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 12:36 PM Patrick Schleizer <adrelanos at riseup.net> wrote:

> Indemnification is clearly a thing.
>
> Other Open Source licenses mention indemnification.

A few others have indemnification clauses, yes.

> Quote opensource.org Terms of Service [2]:
>
> > INDEMNITY
> > You agree to indemnify and hold OSI and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, employees, partners and licensors harmless from any claim or demand, including but not limited to reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of Content you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Service, your use of the OSI Service, your connection to the Service, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another.

That's not an open source license.

> Quote GPLv3:
>
> >   Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you
> > add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of
> > that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >     f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that
> >     material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of
> >     it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for
> >     any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on
> > those licensors and authors.
>
> I wounder why GPLv3 allows to supplement terms related to
> indemnification, but didn't add such an indemnification clause by default?

This was added solely to ensure that the Apache License 2.0 would be
compatible with GPLv3. (For some history see p. 33 of
http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd3-rationale.pdf and p. 9 of
http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd4-rationale.pdf .)

Richard