<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body><div>Appreciate the feedback.</div><p>August 30, 2026 at 8:03 PM, <a href="mailto:license-review-request@lists.opensource.org" target="_blank" tabindex="-1">license-review-request@lists.opensource.org</a> wrote:</p><blockquote>Also, the license gives general permission to "deal in the Model <br>Materials without restriction." We don't know yet what, if any, legal <br>regime might protect models. It may be that trying to bind users to a <br>license to an open source a model is easier said than done, but I don't <br>think that an enforcement mechanism that may not be premised on <br>copyright is a reason to dismiss the license out-of-hand.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>This worries me, because a model is literally the two archetypal categories of thing that can't get a copyright.<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote><div>Paragraph 5 is very typical for open source licenses, except that until <br>now it's only been triggered by a patent infringement suit, not a <br>copyright lawsuit. The copyright trigger has had a great deal of <br>discussion and dissension. We've also discussed Paragraph 8 and whether <br>it imposes a duty on the licensee or is just advisory. If it's just <br>advisory, then it's no different in legal effect than the standard <br>representation that the software is being provided "as-is."</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The jump to copyright seems worrying, because this is (presumably) a copyright license. In fact, that raises a more worrying aspect, the other half of the anti-litigation clause, "...unless that lawsuit was in response to a corresponding lawsuit first brought against you."</div><div><br></div><div>I'm not familiar with any term of art, here, so should we read "corresponding" as meaning that the lawsuit relates to the use of the model? If so, then doesn't this undermine the entire premise of the license? I assume that this paragraph wouldn't refer to suing over license violations, because it doesn't make much sense to grant additional rights (suing for copyright infringement) if you've otherwise violated the license and get caught. If a downstream lawsuit might happen for some other reason, though, then the license only grants rights until the vendor decides otherwise, which...I certainly wouldn't rely on such a license.</div><div><br></div><blockquote><blockquote>Slight tangent: 17 USC §506(c) says that "any person who, with <br> fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or <br> words of the same purport that such person knows to be false...shall <br> be fined not more than $2,500." I don't think that anybody wants to <br> defraud anybody with the license, but the implied claim of ownership <br> of the model in offering the license while also asserting the right to <br> not own it feels like it sets up every vendor for exactly that lawsuit.</blockquote><div><br>This is an overreach, that's a criminal section of the statute and, as <br>your quote includes, requires fraudulent intent. Merely putting a <br>copyright notice on a model, particularly where its legal status is <br>unclear, isn't going to be fraudulent.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't know if it reaches that far, though. Twice, the license itself says that the vendor might not actually have the right to distribute the model and materials. Between that and the low odds of a model qualifying to copyright at all, that at least sounds like a strong case that the copyright claim (intended by releasing under a license) was done despite knowing that.</div><div><br></div><div>For clarity, I don't want to suggest that people will want to use this license to defraud. I'm suggesting that different parts of the license contributes to any other evidence of fraudulent intent, if somebody wanted to level an accusation. I'll grant that I have no experience in copyright litigation, but it seems like it'd be really hard to claim an innocent mistake with the license saying that "we might not own the copyrights and you can't sue us if we (any of us) specifically stole from you."</div><div><br></div><blockquote><div>As mentioned, paragraph 5 premised on a patent infringement lawsuit is <br>common in open source licenses. If paragraph 8 is just advisory, I would <br>view it charitably as trying to provide information about a type of work <br>with new kinds of legal risks that people may not be aware of.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That also makes me really uncomfortable, especially in aggregate with the other unclear definitions. If we need to hope that vendors will interpret multiple terms in a specific way AND see an entire paragraph as "not counting," then the license really looks like "try using it, and the vendor will decide whether it was acceptable." I don't think that anybody could rely on that. Mind you, I agree what we can probably trust many vendors to not betray the downstream, but licenses need to account for the people not operating in good faith, otherwise we wouldn't have licenses in the first place.</div><div><br></div><div>Again, I appreciate the clarification. I don't know if the answers made me more comfortable with the license, but I'm also not a decision-maker, here.</div></body></html>