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Thanks Moming. I meant to put in the post that my viewpoint is, I
think obviously, from a US law perspective. It may work different
ways in different legal systems, but this is how it is likely to be
interpreted in the US.<br>
<br>
Pam<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">Pamela S. Chestek<br>
Chestek Legal<br>
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/5/2025 12:39 AM, Moming Duan
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DD314986-5AD6-48B1-AA29-5758713C0945@gmail.com">
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<div>Hi Pamela,</div>
<div><br>
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<div><br>
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<div>Many thanks for your professional explanation. Your response
is not only valuable for amending the ModelGo license but also
highly educational for me. I truly appreciate your attention to
detail and admire your expertise in licensing. As an ML
researcher trying to understand licensing in my own way, I
recognize that GPL has an automatic licensing mechanism rather
than sublicensing. Additionally, some ModelGo license variants,
such as the non-commercial (NC) one, are non-sublicensable. I
now see this as a flaw that neither my lawyer nor I initially
identified, or perhaps they believed the notice sufficiently
addressed it. I will continue consulting with legal experts to
verify this matter.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Best,
<div>Moming<br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage">
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>On 5 Mar 2025, at 1:43 PM, Pamela Chestek
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com"><pamela@chesteklegal.com></a> wrote:</div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/4/2025 7:31 PM, Moming
Duan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:8AD47C4D-82EC-445B-A856-980407A1A8DD@gmail.com">
<div><br>
</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div>2. Also, by my reading, the notice
requirement isn't inheritable. So if I were to
take the output from a ModelGo model, and use it
to train a new model called "JoshAI", then there
is no requirement that JoshAI have any
particular notices.<br>
</div>
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<div><br>
</div>
<div>Partly so. If the original model is licensed
under MG-BY-OS, derivatives must also be licensed
under MG-BY-OS because it is copyleft. However, for
other variants like MG0, no such notice is required.
The reason I intend to add a notice in MG-BY-OS is
to ensure open-source inheritance. Consider a
scenario where I use an MG-BY-OS model and
distribute its output as a dataset on Hugging Face
without indicating which model I used. If another
user downloads the dataset, trains a new model, and
changes its license, they may unintentionally
violate the MG-BY-OS license. This behavior is very
common in current model development, and you can
find many such extracted datasets on Hugging Face.</div>
<div><br>
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<p>I believe that you have a drafting flaw that means
that the copyleft doesn't necessarily work,
specifically that your license is sublicenseable. The
GPLs are not; that is one of the brilliant aspects of
the GPLs.</p>
<p>The BY-OS license in section 2.1(a) says "<i>Subject
to the terms and conditions of this License, the
Licensor hereby grants to You a non-exclusive,
non-transferable, </i>sublicensable<i>,
irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right </i><i>and
license (including the relevant copyrights and
patent rights) to ...</i>"</p>
<p>The notice requirement is in 2.4(b) and says "<i>You
may Distribute the Output to third parties provided
that You indicate as part of the Distribution that
any Output generated through the use of the Licensed
Materials and/or Derivative Materials may contain
AI-generated content.</i>"</p>
<p>Notably in both sections the person bound is "You,"
defined in Section 1.1 as "<i>you, or any other person
or entity (if you are entering into this license on
behalf of such person or entity and provided you
have the legal authority to bind such person or
entity).</i>" I don't think that a sublicensee is
necessarily "You" - perhaps you can argue that the
Licensee is entering the license on behalf of its
sublicensees, but I don't believe that is the intended
meaning of this section. I believe the intended
meaning covers the case where "You" is acting as an
agent for the licensee, for example, a vendor who is
creating a software program for a client. That's what
I think it means in the Apache license.<br>
</p>
<p>So if "You" doesn't include sublicensees, then
sublicensees can lawfully create Output but have no
contractual obligation to label it.</p>
<p>There is an argument that the sublicensee might still
be required to label, depending on whether Section 2.4
is considered a condition of a copyright license. But
that's taking your chances that two things are true:
(1) there is copyrightable subject matter and (2) the
obligation to label output, in an entirely different
section of the agreement without any signal language
such as "on the condition that" or "provided that,"
would still nevertheless be a condition on the
copyright license. So I wouldn't count on it.</p>
<p>This is a major hurdle with models, you have to
assume that the obligations you want to impose related
to them are only enforceable through contract, not
copyright. So that means you have to find a way to be
directly in privity with all users so they are
contractually bound, but granting sublicenses means
you aren't.</p>
<p>Pam<br>
</p>
<p>Pamela S. Chestek (in my personal capacity)<br>
Chestek Legal<br>
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS<br>
4641 Post St.<br>
Unit 4316<br>
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762<br>
+1 919-800-8033<br>
pamela@chesteklegal<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="http://www.chesteklegal.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true">www.chesteklegal.com</a><br>
</p>
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