[License-review] ModelGo Attribution License, Version 2.0 FINAL CALL FOR COMMENTS

Mon Sep 21 10:31:44 UTC 2026

Hi Pam and All,

Thank you for walking through the scenarios. Let me try again with your own
examples, and please tell me if I get any of this wrong.

On my earlier point: that was my reading of the definitions (I'm not a
lawyer), and I may have stretched it. I think your reading is the better
one. Licensor is the rights owner whose grant is in Section 2.1. This also
settles "the" versus "a" for me: for this clause there is one counterparty.
This license has no mechanism for a distributor to pass on patent rights of
its own; every patent right it grants comes from the Licensor. If someone
downstream has patented their improvement, that grant happens outside this
license. So far as this clause is concerned, there really is just the one.

Your three cases, exactly as they operate:

- C sues User A, who only runs the model: C keeps the license.
- C sues User B, a distributor: C keeps the license.
- C sues the Licensor: C loses the license.

The license is one grant from one grantor, and the exchange inside it is
bilateral. The Licensor grants the practice of the Licensed Materials and,
by 2.1(a)(iii), of Derivative Materials too. The licensee's side of the
exchange is not to turn a patent claim against the grantor. When the clause
fires, the Licensor takes back the one thing that was given, from the one
party who took it and then attacked the giver with it. The Derivative
Materials part follows from the same place: 2.1(a)(iii) puts their practice
inside the grant, so a claim that a Derivative infringes is a claim that
the granted practice is unlawful.

Apache-2.0 looks different because its shape is different. Its patent
licenses come from many contributors, and any claim about the work, against
anyone, even a cross-claim, ends the patent licenses You hold. A
single-grantor license has no such machinery, so we chose the narrower
trigger. You lose the license only by suing the grantor; nobody loses
anything for enforcing a patent against another user. Under OpenMDW-1.1,
termination can follow a copyright claim, a suit you voluntarily joined
rather than started, or a claim brought against anyone at all. Under MG-BY,
the clause fires on one thing only: a patent suit you yourself initiate
against the Licensor. It reaches nothing beyond what our own grant covers.

On OSD 5 itself. Everyone who holds the license holds it on the same terms
and loses it the same way. I can't find a licensee who gets less than
another licensee. The Licensor is not a licensee; it gives the license
rather than holds it. Apache has the same asymmetry between a Contributor,
who grants patent rights and can have them taken back, and a plain
recipient, who grants nothing and so has nothing to lose. I haven't seen
anyone call that discrimination. Our clause has that shape with one giver
instead of many, and I don't see a classification of persons in it, which
is what I understand OSD 5 to be about.

To press one point, respectfully: I am not aware that OSI has ever held
that a patent-termination shield must protect everyone to satisfy OSD 5.
That would be a new principle, and if the review establishes it, I will
revise the clause accordingly. Thanks.

Best,
Moming

Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com> 于2026年9月21日周一 11:44写道：

> Moming,
>
> I'm not following what you're saying. As I understand McCoy's point, it is
> this:
>
> - Licensor is any contributor who added copyrightable content;
>
> - User A is someone who is using Licensor's version of the software but
> has not contributed any copyrightable content and is not distributing the
> software;
>
> -User B is someone who is using Licensor's version of the software, has
> not contributed any copyrightable content, but is distributing the
> software, who you are characterizing as a sublicensor of Licensor's rights;
>
> - User C is the person who owns the allegedly infringed patent.
>
> ===============
>
> User C sues a Licensor for patent infringement - the license terminates.
>
> User C sues User A for for patent infringement - the license does not
> terminate because User A is not a Licensor of anything, they are just using
> the software.
>
> User C sues User B for patent infringement - the license does not
> terminate. First, characterizing User B as a sublicensor may not be a
> correct assumption - why wouldn't User C say "no, I'm not a sublicensee of
> User B, I'm a direct licensee of Licensor who I haven't sued, so the
> license doesn't terminate"? But even assuming User B is a sublicensor, it
> doesn't terminate the license. User B is a sublicensor, not *"the *Licensor,"
> i.e., the "rights owner" per your definition, so the license doesn't
> terminate.
>
> That is the discrimination that I understand McCoy to be describing. The
> license only terminates if User C sues someone who contributed
> copyrightable content, because those are the only people (or companies) who
> have a license that can be terminated. Everyone else can still be sued for
> copyright infringement.
>
> The use of the word "the" in "the Licensor" in the termination section is
> problematic for another reason. The corpus may have many licensors. I think
> the more natural reading is that only the license from the person being
> sued terminates, not all of them. If it said "any legal action against
> *_a_* Licensor alleging that the Licensed Materials and/or Derivative
> Materials infringe any patent worldwide" would terminate all of them. But
> that doesn't solve the problem described above with mere users, not
> contributors, being the defendant in the patent suit.
>
> Pam
> Pamela S. Chestek
> Chestek Legal
> 4641 Post St.
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> Unit 4316
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> +1 919-800-8033 <(919)%20800-8033>
> pamela at chesteklegal.com
> www.chesteklegal.com
>
>
> On 9/18/2026 2:58 AM, Moming Duan wrote:
>
> Hi McCoy and all,
>
>
> OSD 5 says the license must not discriminate against any person or group
> of persons. Here, Licensor is a role in the license, not a person. And the
> license itself says how the role moves. The Section 2.1 grant is
> sublicensable, and 2.2(a)(i) requires a copy of this License to travel with
> every Distribution. Even the definition of "Licensed Materials", things
> "Distributed by the Licensor", only really works if each distributor is the
> Licensor for what it distributes. So a licensee who passes the model or a
> Derivative Material on is granting the license onward. It stands as
> Licensor to the people it supplied, and a patent claim by those people does
> trigger termination.
>
> About your May 2025 conclusion, I want to be precise. You wrote then that
> this termination provision was not an OSD violation but an uptake issue,
> and that conclusion was about the Derivative Materials part, which is your
> Q4:
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2025-May/005764.html
> The OSD 5 question, whether the trigger should reach beyond the Licensor,
> is new in this final call, and you yourself put it as "arguably". So I read
> it as an open question rather than a settled one, and not something to
> concede on my own.
>
> It's true that a user who never distributed anything, and sues another
> licensee, does not lose the license. That is deliberate. The patent grant
> has one source, and the promise not to assert runs to that source. A
> dispute between two people who never granted each other anything is outside
> that exchange.
>
> So my reading is that the clause, as written, does not discriminate
> against any person or group, and I'd like to keep the current wording.
>
>
> Best,
> Moming
>
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