[License-review] For Approval: OpenMDW License Agreement, versions 1.1 (OpenMDW-1.1)

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2026 at 2:51 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
wrote:

> McCoy, you asked for a definition of "software freedom" and Moming's
> response is similar to my thoughts:
>
> On 8/29/2026 11:10 PM, Moming Duan wrote:
>
> Here is a simple test of my own: *if 99% of the world's models were
> released under license X, would our ecosystem be better off?*
>
> My premise is that the everyone benefits from a software commons, so, does
> the license encourage or discourage sharing?
>
"Software freedom" is the ability to do anything you want with the
> software. A few conditions/impairments are allowed because they indirectly
> encourage the growth of the software commons - giving credit (copyright
> notice/attribution), telling people what their rights are (the license),
> the appropriate distribution of risk (the "as-is" rep and disclaimer of
> warranty), and compulsory sharing (copyleft). The balance is very delicate.
> It's questionable whether the GPLv3, and then the AGPL, contribute to the
> health of the open source software commons because they are commonly used
> as the antagonist to encourage people to get a commercial license instead.
> It does, though, seem that lever isn't as successful anymore, since people
> are more willing to comply with the copyleft licenses and these two
> licenses are more often being used for their intended benefit.
>
> This, I think, is the piece that's missing from the OSD. We've seen the
> OSD gamed when it has been formally met but it is nevertheless clear that
> the license is designed to give one entity superior rights in the software
> or has mechanisms that will discourage the use of the software. "Providing
> software freedom" as a requirement is a check on that.
>
FWIW any or all of Pam's formulations of "encouraging sharing of software"
or "contributing to the health of the software commons" or "protecting the
open software ecosystem" (from an opensource.com essay of yours, Pam, IIRC)
would be vastly superior to "providing software freedom".

Besides the obvious point that software doesn't have freedom, any of those
would be much clearer to argue about, with less baggage. (There would still
be plenty of arguing; all of those still require value judgments. But at
least it'd be a value that one can attempt to decipher from the words.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20260831/6490d979/attachment-0001.htm>