[License-discuss] For Discussion: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 with NonCommercial Exception

[McCoy Smith]

I general, OSI doesn't approve partial licenses or add-ons to existing 
licenses. Although this is presented as a complete license 
(AGPL+additional permission) I think this one falls within that 
prohibition. Specifically since AGPL (as well as the other v3 *GPLs) do 
allow for additional permissions, this seems like it is simply availing 
itself of that option to tack some customized terms to an approved license.
So I think this probably is not approvable for that reason, but worth a 
discussion on the board to see if others differ on that point.

FWIW, there are lots of additional permissions floating around (most 
famously, with the kernel) and those haven't ever successfully gone 
through the approval process AFAIK.

On 8/3/2026 6:49 AM, Kevin P. Fleming via License-discuss wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2026, at 09:00, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
>> On 8/2/26 18:21, Shao Kai via License-discuss wrote:
>>>     1. Does the non-commercial exemption as defined in the additional
>>>        permission raise any concerns regarding OSD Section 6 (No
>>>        Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor)?
>> Yes, unequivocally. It's stated in
>> https://opensource.org/licenses/common-reasons-for-rejection-of-licenses
>>
>> I haven't processed the other questions.
> That was my additional reaction too, but I'm willing to consider that 'additional permissions' may be acceptable on a field-of-endeavor basis where 'fewer permissions' are not, as long as the baseline set of permissions would otherwise be compatible with the OSD.
>
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