<div dir="ltr">Hi McCoy,<br><br>My fault. I was in a meeting and had not updated the text yet.<br><br><div>I have now updated the MG-BY-2.0 license text on GitHub:<br><br>-MG-BY </div><div><span style="background-color:transparent"><a href="https://github.com/Xtra-Computing/ModelGo/blob/main/MGL/V2/MG-BY/LICENSE">https://github.com/Xtra-Computing/ModelGo/blob/main/MGL/V2/MG-BY/LICENSE</a></span></div><div><br>- MG0 <span style="background-color:transparent">does not contain a patent-assertion termination provision, so it has not been changed, FYI,</span></div><div><a href="https://github.com/Xtra-Computing/ModelGo/blob/main/MGL/V2/MG0/LICENSE">https://github.com/Xtra-Computing/ModelGo/blob/main/MGL/V2/MG0/LICENSE</a></div><div><br></div><div><i>(Please disregard the text currently served from the <a href="http://ids.nus.edu.sg">ids.nus.edu.sg</a> URL.</i><i style="background-color:transparent">That copy is hosted on a university server, </i></div><div><i style="background-color:transparent">and updating it requires approval from the project manager. </i><i style="background-color:transparent">I will update it later.)</i></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Moming</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">McCoy Smith <mccoy@lexpan.law> \u4e8e2026\u5e749\u670823\u65e5\u5468\u4e09 22:09\u5199\u9053\uff1a<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<p>Dr. Duan:</p>
<p>Are you going to update ModelGo-BY-2.0 to reflect the new
termination language below, and would that be the version of the
license that you are asking to be approved by OSI? The proposal
below, which changes just the termination provision, seems to be
consistent with the other licenses which I highlighted previously
that have non-discriminatory patent assertion termination clauses,
and may address what may be the last concern that has been
expressed on this particular license.</p>
<p>I looked at the GitHub and the website for ModelGo and I hadn't
seen that this revision had been made to the canonical versions of
the license (which is what, ultimately, OSI needs to be able to
see in order to ensure we know what it is is being
approved/disapproved).</p>
<p>McCoy</p>
<div>On 9/22/2026 10:56 PM, Moming Duan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Pam,<br>
<br>
<br>
Here is the revised TERMINATION:<br>
<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border-width:medium;border-style:none;border-color:currentcolor;padding:0px">5.
TERMINATION</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border-width:medium;border-style:none;border-color:currentcolor;padding:0px">This
License shall terminate immediately if You breach any material
term and/or condition of this License. <b>The patent license
granted to You under this License shall terminate
immediately if You initiate any legal action against any
person or entity alleging that the Licensed Materials
infringe any patent worldwide.</b> Sections 3, 4 and 6 shall
survive the termination of this License.</blockquote>
<br>
This keeps the existing rule that a material breach terminates
the whole License. For patent litigation, it removes Derivative
Materials as a trigger, applies regardless of who is sued, and
ends only the patent license.
<div>I believe this revision strikes a better balance and may
make the license more attractive to potential adopters. The
ModelGo licenses would not be what they are today without the
feedback from everyone in the OSI community. Those discussions
have also helped me continue to refine my understanding of
Open Source, and I\u2019m sincerely grateful for that.<br>
<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Moming<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Pamela Chestek <<a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a>>
\u4e8e2026\u5e749\u670823\u65e5\u5468\u4e09 01:46\u5199\u9053\uff1a<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div> Hi Moming,<br>
<br>
Your response is quite troubling to me. I read it as saying
that the disparate treatment of copyright owners versus mere
users of the software is intentional. As Joshua Gay
described in the OpenMDW thread, the motive for the patent
termination provision was because patents threatened the
singular goal of the open source license, which is
unfettered freedom to use the software. In other words, the
open source license grants virtually unlimited right to use
the software, but a patent aggressor can stop that use with
a patent claim. The response was to withdraw the patent
aggressor's patent (and sometimes copyright) license to use
the software. So I find the intentional maintenance of the
ability to sue a user troubling, given the historical basis
for the patent termination clause.<br>
<br>
I also note that the one of <a href="https://opensource.org/licenses/review-process" target="_blank">the requirements
for new licenses</a> is "The license does not have terms
that structurally put the licensor in a more favored
position than any licensee." This does put the licensor in a
more favored position than a licensee.<br>
<br>
I also don't understand why you are characterizing this
license as a "single-grantor license" and distinguish it
from Apache on that basis. All licenses are "single
grantor," Apache included, that is, a single contributor is
granting a license to their own contribution. If you are
saying that the Apache license may be a grant from multiple
licensors because it may be sublicensing from inbound
licensors, the same is true of the ModelGo Attribution
License, which is also sublicensable. So I'm not following
why you think that your situation is, can be, or should be
different from how the Apache license works.<br>
<br>
Pam<br>
<br>
<div>Pamela S. Chestek<br>
Chestek Legal<br>
<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank">4641 Post St.</a><br>
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</a><a href="tel:(919)%20800-8033" value="+19198008033" target="_blank">+1 919-800-8033</a><br>
<a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a><br>
<a href="http://www.chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">www.chesteklegal.com</a><br>
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</div>
<div>On 9/21/2026 3:31 AM, Moming Duan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Pam and All,<br>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Your three cases, exactly as they operate:<br>
<br>
- C sues User A, who only runs the model: C keeps the
license.<br>
- C sues User B, a distributor: C keeps the license.<br>
- C sues the Licensor: C loses the license.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Moming<br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Pamela Chestek <<a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a>>
\u4e8e2026\u5e749\u670821\u65e5\u5468\u4e00 11:44\u5199\u9053\uff1a<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Moming,</p>
<p>I'm not following what you're saying. As I
understand McCoy's point, it is this:</p>
<p>- Licensor is any contributor who added
copyrightable content;</p>
<p>- 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;</p>
<p>-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;</p>
<p>- User C is the person who owns the allegedly
infringed patent. </p>
<p>===============</p>
<p>User C sues a Licensor for patent infringement -
the license terminates.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <b><i>"the </i></b>Licensor,"
i.e., the "rights owner" per your definition, so
the license doesn't terminate.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<b><i>_a_</i></b> 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.</p>
<p>Pam</p>
<div>Pamela S. Chestek<br>
Chestek Legal<br>
<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank">4641 Post
St.</a><br>
<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank"> Unit
4316</a><br><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post%0D%0A++++++++++++++++++++++++St.+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++++++++++Unit%0D%0A++++++++++++++++++++++++4316+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++++++++++El%0D%0A++++++++++++++++++++++++Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g">
</a><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A+++++++++++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g" target="_blank"> El
Dorado Hills, CA 95762</a><br>
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</a><a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a><br>
<a href="http://www.chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">www.chesteklegal.com</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>On 9/18/2026 2:58 AM, Moming Duan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi McCoy and all,<br>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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: <span style="background-color:transparent"><a href="https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2025-May/005764.html" target="_blank">https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2025-May/005764.html</a></span>
<div>
<div><span style="background-color:transparent">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.</span></div>
<div><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Moming<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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