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

[Andrew Katz]

IMV an additional permission, even if NC limited, does not prevent the licence from being open source. 

A quick thought experiment: code is dual licensed under GPL and CC-BY-NC. Is it open source? Yes, clearly, because a recipient can use it (etc) under GPL. The addition of another optional licence cannot act as an additional restriction under the GPL. Of course if the code is modified and redistributed under the NC licence, that is not open source, but there’s no contradiction there. 

This proposal is essentially for a dual licence under an open source licence and another restrictive licence. 

Best

Andrew



Andrew Katz
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> On 3 Aug 2026, at 14:51, Kevin P. Fleming via License-discuss <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> 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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