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

[Luis Villa]

And to be clear, I don’t offer this as a statement in favor or defense of
the equivalent clause in the new license draft, which I haven’t read.
Simply interpreting MPL 2 and offering the rationale.

I think it’s obvious that the rationale plays out differently in this new
fact pattern, but how that should play out for OSI analysis I have not
given much thought to.

On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 6:36 AM Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:

> MPL 2.0’s defensive clause terminates copyright grants specifically
> because the patent grant is often such a toothless remedy.
>
> A major software company (and frequent patent litigator) told us that
> they’d never ship MPL 2 software because of that, which we counted as a win.
>
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 4:28 AM David Rudin <David at foundational.law>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> The copyright termination remedy has precedent in specification
>> licensing. The OWF agreements have carried it since 2009, the Community
>> Specification License since 2020. Admittedly, both are specification
>> agreements and were never submitted for OSI approval.
>>
>> OWFa 1.0 § 3.1.2.1 — and 0.9 before it — terminates "all rights, grants,
>> and promises made by me to you under this Agreement." Not under Section 3,
>> but under the Agreement, and § 2.1 is the copyright grant. The FAQ is
>> explicit: the signer's promises not to assert its Granted Claims "and its
>> copyrights" terminate; "defensive termination only means that the patent
>> and copyright licenses terminate" (Q16). The copyright license is given
>> irrevocably "except for defensive purposes" (Q3).
>>
>> The CSL carries it forward. The copyright license is irrevocable "except
>> as expressly stated in this License" (§ 1.1), and the express statement is
>> the defensive termination clause, which terminates "any licenses granted
>> under this License" (§ 2.1.4).
>>
>> The reasoning is that an instrument covering one body of material under
>> several overlapping IP regimes is granting one IP bargain, not a group of
>> individual bargains based on distinct IP regimes.  If the remedy reaches
>> only patents, a licensee can assert copyright in the materials it received
>> and keep its copyright license to those same materials. Closing that
>> asymmetry is the point.
>>
>> David
>>
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