[License-review] For Approval: OpenMDW License Agreement, versions 1.1 (OpenMDW-1.1)

[Rob Landley]

On 8/13/26 14:00, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> I recall a presentation at a conference many years ago tracing the 
> history of different licenses and the scope of revocation. As I recall 
> it, there was an expansion to include copyright termination but then 
> that retracted back to just patent. Can anyone provide some color on the 
> thinking about why copyright termination may or should be disfavored 
> upon a patent infringement claim?

In a proper open source license, there's no "one true owner". Anybody 
can fork the project and maintain their own version under the same 
license. I believe failure to allow that is against the open source 
definition.

Somebody forks a project and bolts on proprietary code. If the 
proprietary company sues the fork, do they lose access to the _upstream_ 
version of the project?

That's aside from upstream being a bad actor. (If the linux kernel was 
under this license, Linus could take anybody's code and they could do 
nothing about it: an obvious attempt to create Too Big To Sue.)

Also, if somebody takes _this_ project's code and puts it under a 
different license... can the project _itself_ sue? Can the license EVER 
BE ENFORCED? Because it would terminate its _own_ right to use the 
licensed material. (Unless it plans to never have external contributors 
and thus not need its own license. And even with no external 
contributors, could anyone else safely use a license issued by someone 
that had explicitly terminated its _own_ ability to use that license? I 
can see side-eye from a judge about splitting that hair, let alone 
claiming the resulting "no, I'm magic and special, only I can do this" 
has anything to do with "open source".)

But if you want to approve a license that can either never be enforced 
or only enforced by a specific custodian in whom all rights and 
ownership vests nontransferrably... you do you.

Rob

P.S. this is just the surface level stupid. There's almost certainly 
more stupid if you dig.