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

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2026 at 7:46 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
wrote:

> On one side we have the view that, if you use the fruit of my labor, it's
> only fair that in exchange you not sue me. If that's the accepted rationale
> for the trigger, then as a matter of logic it should be a valid position
> for any kind of claim against the licensed materials, whether copyright,
> trade secret, patent, database, moral rights, etc. The further extension
> that Richard identified was that any claim against the licensor, i.e., what
> Facebook's BSD + Patent license tried to do, could also be fair game. That
> could be a slippery slope, but I don't think anyone is advocating for this
> expansion.
>
The other side of the divide is the one that believes patents are a special
> case with logic that doesn't extend beyond patents, as articulated in
> different ways by different people for different reasons.
>

FWIW I would say the only way to make full sense of the historical record
is that the community surrounding OSI saw patents as a unique problem for
open source deserving unique (if any) treatment, though opinions on how an
open source license can properly deal with that problem have shifted over
time.

Richard
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