This is the way they are defined in the GS/OS Reference, as well as the way they seem to be used by all assemblers and all other linkers that I could check (ORCA/M, MPW AsmIIGS, Apple LinkIIGS, old ORCA/APW LINKED, 8-bit ORCA linker).
Previously, this linker treated ORG records as giving an absolute address to ORG to (but with a bug in the address computation). The OMF spec in appendix B of the ORCA/M manual defines them this way, but this is inconsistent with the spec in the GS/OS Reference and with the way ORG records are generated by ORCA/M itself (for an ORG *+expression directive). Therefore, I think this is just an error and the specification in the GS/OS Reference should be regarded as correct.
We still do not support going backward (using a negative ORG operand). Trying to do so will just give an error.