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<p>A few thoughts, in my personal capacity.</p>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/24/2025 5:26 AM, Barksdale, Marvin
via License-review wrote:<br>
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Thanks all for the early review. <br>
Agreed, there are several formatting issues that may have been
caused by exporting to plain text that have corrupted the
submitted version, including added and missing characters.
Although I am withdrawing this submission, in anticipation of
further review I would like to like flag the areas where we are
in alignment and hopefully clarify the areas where we are not:</div>
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I assume you're going to do another revision to the license to
address some of the concerns raised with a least the way the patent
grant is articulated? If so, I won't get into details on that grant
other than to briefly respond to your discussion below.
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<div role="presentation" class="elementToProof"> Regarding the
questions around intent behind MGB 1.0's disclaimer of
obligations : "For clarity, no patent license is granted by
a Contributor for infringements caused by: (i) your or any
other party's Derivative Works, or (ii) the combination of
the Work with anything other than the Contributor Version."<br>
<br>
Although we originally intended to add clarity to the
initial grant through utilizing an approach approved by the
OSI in other licenses such as MPL 2.0, I agree with the
findings that this language became contradictory in its
adoption to the MGB 1.0 use-case. I believe striking this
clarifying clause and integrating Contributor Version in the
Contribution definition does not interfere with MGB 1.0's
core approach. <br>
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Obviously, there are OSI approved licenses that use Contributor
version and Contribution to mean different things (example:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/">https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/</a> or
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html">https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html</a>) . I think the problem
here was to try to use those predecessor licenses' language in a
license (Apache-2.0) that doesn't formulate it that way. You might
want to just make sure you're adjusting the patent grant in
Apache-2.0 in a way that's consistent with those predecessor
licenses' grants. MPL-2.0 has a grant that contemplates both
definitions. Perhaps use that one instead?
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<p style="line-height: 1.38; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"
role="presentation" class="elementToProof">
Regarding MGB 1.0's Patent Grant : "Subject to the terms
and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby
grants to You a (perpetual*), worldwide, non-exclusive,
sublicensable, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except
as stated in this section) patent license, under any patent
claims owned or controlled by the Contributor, to make, have
made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise
transfer the Work and Derivative Works, but only to the
extent such patent claims claim inventions embodied in
[their Contribution(s)]."</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.38; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"
role="presentation" class="elementToProof">
The MGB 1.0 patent grant's intent is to grant rights under
patent claims controlled by Contributor to the Work and
Derivative Works to the extent such claims claim inventions
embodied in their Contribution (in the form it exists
immediately after the Contributor submits it.) Compared to
the Apache 2.0 Patent Grant to "patent claims licensable by
such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their
Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their
Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s)
was submitted."</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.38; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"
role="presentation" class="elementToProof">
Apache 2.0\u2019s grant of all licensable patent claims that are
necessarily infringed by the contribution or by combination
of their contribution with the original work opens the door
to downstream infringement via later acquired
contributor-controlled claims. The effect here is similar
to elements the GPL 3.0 license, which includes a grant to
the contributor's essential patent claims: all patent
claims owned or controlled by the contributor, whether
already acquired or hereafter acquired, that would be
infringed by some manner, permitted by this License, of
making, using, or selling its contributor version, but do
not include claims that would be infringed only as a
consequence of further modification of the contributor
version.</p>
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I'm not sure this explanation makes sense. GPL is designed to make
clear that any grant applies to subsequently-acquired patents ("<span
style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">whether
already acquired or hereafter acquired,") </span><span
style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">even
if those patents were not owned or controlled by the licensor at
the time the contribution/contributor version was made. But you
say that Apache-2.0, upon which you based your draft, has the
problem of "open[ing] the door to downstream infringement [I
assume you mean patent grants] via later acquired
contributor-controlled claims. Which is it? If you want to carve
out those claims from the grant, I think you should be explicit
about it, and explain why it is you think carving out those claims
is an improvement or necessary for certain licensors.</span>
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<p style="line-height: 1.38; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"
role="presentation" class="elementToProof">
The intent of MGB 1.0 is for the contributor to grant the
patent claims necessary to use the contributed software, not
to, for example, infringing claims later acquired as a
consequence of further modification (e.g. new infringement
and the entire portfolio exposure referenced by Lawrence
Rosen in \u201cOpen Source Licensing \u2013 Software Freedom and
Intellectual Property Law"). Thus this goal is accomplished
even after removing the disclaimer of combination language
(see: 1. above) causing several issues.</p>
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Is there a specific section of Larry's book that you're referencing?
In the discussion of OSL & AFL he says "Those patent claims are
available to both the Original Work and Derivative Works. This is
not a license to embody those patent claims in independent works."
Are you trying to exclude "independent" (i.e., non-derivative)
works, or something else? If you don't want to have subsequent
modifications made by downstream licensees to be be licensed, I
think you need to be clear about that and explain what sort of
downstream modifications you are trying to exclude. Apache-2.0 (as
well as other more recent OSI licenses) is fairly clear that it only
applies to their own Contribution, or that Contribution "<span
style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">or
by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which
such Contribution(s) was submitted.</span>" Are you trying to
exclude the combination grant, or both the Contribution grant *and*
the Combination grant? I think you need to be clear about that. If
you want to exclude the Contribution grant, this license probably
has the problem of not conveying all rights (or requiring payment
for exercising rights) per OSD 1. If it is the Combination grant,
and you want to expressly disclaim that grant, I think you might be
running up against the state of the law of patent exhaustion as
articulated in Quanta/LGE and progeny.
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