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

[Bradley M. Kühn]

Andrew Katz wrote about 20 minutes ago:
> This proposal is essentially for a dual licence under an open
> source licence and another restrictive licence.

I think you've misunderstood the proposal.  (Note that the initial
email in this thread wasn't self-contained; it linked to a draft.)

I do agree with you that a meta-license-style that offers permission
under “EITHER AGPLv3 OR SomeWeirdNewThing” is a straightforward
situation.  But the situation as proposed is more complex.

Anyway, the dual license you mention and what Shao proposed *are
both* FOSS licenses …
> IMV an additional permission, even if NC limited, does not prevent
> the licence from being open source.
… but for very different reasons, and the reason you state does not
apply to Shao's (now-withdrawn) proposal.

That proposal remains FOSS license specifically because AGPLv3
permits removal of the weird new terms by anyone (and everyone) in
the distribution chain.  They may operate under plain AGPLv3 (which
mandates provision of Corresponding Source).  The whole distribution
chain remains a FOSS one, because the removal can be done by anyone
at any time and they can then demand Corresponding Source from the
entity that Conveyed/deployed it to/at them.

By contrast, “EITHER AGPLv3 or SomeWeirdNewThing” is a FOSS license
because it grants two separate lines of permissions, and downstream
recipient/user may choose either.  If they choses AGPLv3, then
SomeWeirdNewThing goes away entirely throughout their distribution
chain.  If they chooses SomeWeirdNewThing that clearly isn't FOSS,
then that whole distribution chain is now a non-FOSS distribution
chain.  IOW, there is *no* copyleft guarantee with this structure.
One might as well just release it under MIT license.
--
     -- bkühn — he/them — On Fediverse (via Mastodon): https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn