[License-review] Please review revised ModelGo licenses

[Moming Duan]

Hi Pam,


ModelGo Licenses (MG-0, MG-BY, and MG-BY-OS) clearly grant the right to create Derivative Materials, including new models developed via techniques such as distillation. As stated in Section 2.2(b), attribution is not required for internal use of generated content; the obligation only applies when generated datasets are Distributed.
This is a lightweight, attribution-style requirement that is easy to comply with, for example, by including proper credit in the dataset README, as commonly seen on: https://huggingface.co/datasets
Importantly, this does not mean that the generated dataset must adopt the same license as the original model. 
I recognize that attribution information may be lost over several generations—just as licensing information is often lost when data is crawled from the web and later used to train models. However, it would be unreasonable to respond to this challenge by altering data licenses to allow unrestricted reuse and removal of attribution simply for the sake of convenience or ease of crawling. 

Even though the question of who owns generated content remains a legal issue yet to be fully resolved. But if model-generated content (at least when collected in significant quantities) didn’t contain knowledge or reasoning patterns akin to “source code,” why would there be such widespread enthusiasm for model distillation? We don’t see people transferring knowledge from books they wrote in Word into TEXT with the same motivation. A more fitting analogy is users copying code from one repository to another—that, to me, better captures what’s happening. This is my personal opinion.


Best,
Moming



> On 15 May 2025, at 11:38 AM, Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com> wrote:
> 
> This appears to be an attempt at making it a restriction for distillation or synthetic data generation, not, for example, an individual work ("a collection of Output as a dataset"), and I don't doubt that it's well-intended, but I agree that the limitation on Output is inconsistent with open source principles.  It also seems unworkable as the original Output is further reused downstream. How would one know if the original Output is still there several generations later?
> 
> Pam
> 
> Pamela S. Chestek
> Chestek Legal
> 4641 Post St.
> Unit 4316
> El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
> +1 919-800-8033
> pamela at chesteklegal
> www.chesteklegal.com <http://www.chesteklegal.com/>
> 
> 
> On 5/14/2025 7:09 AM, Carlo Piana wrote:
>> Josh,
>> 
>> sorry for long silence.
>> 
>> I think that the new version of the ModelGo license does not seem to addres=
>> s the concern I have expressed against it, following up on your own comment=
>>  on output (now in 2.bb). I think that imposing anything on the output of t=
>> he model is against the OSD as it is a restriction on the use of the licens=
>> ed subject matter.
>> 
>> So no, I am confused at how this new text should be addressing the above co=
>> ncern.
>> 
>> In a separate thread I have expressed perplexity on certain clauses, these =
>> seem to have been removed, so no issue on that end.
>> 
>> This applies to the updated versions.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> 
>> Carlo
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Messaggio originale -----
>>> Da: "Josh Berkus" <josh.berkus at opensource.org> <mailto:josh.berkus at opensource.org>
>>> A: "License submissions for OSI review" <license-review at lists.opensource.= <mailto:license-review at lists.opensource.=>
>> org>
>>> Inviato: Marted=C3=AC, 15 aprile 2025 1:46:45
>>> Oggetto: [License-review] Please review revised ModelGo licenses
>>> Carlo, Pam, Eric, Shuji,
>>> =20
>>> Moming has re-submitted revised versions of his licenses based on your
>>> feedback.  Please check them when you can and make sure that your
>>> concerns about the licenses have been addressed.
>>> =20
>>> --
>>> -- Josh Berkus
>>> OSI Board Member
>>> =20
>>> =20
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not nece=
>> ssarily
>>> those of the Open Source Initiative. Communication from the Open Source
>>> Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>>> =20
>>> License-review mailing list
>>> License-review at lists.opensource.org <mailto:License-review at lists.opensource.org>
>>> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensou=
>> rce.org
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Communication from the Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>> 
>> License-review mailing list
>> License-review at lists.opensource.org <mailto:License-review at lists.opensource.org>
>> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Communication from the Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
> 
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20250515/4313815e/attachment-0001.htm>