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

[Kevin P. Fleming]

I posted this on social media, but might as well post it here too even though IANAL and this could be wildly pointless, but...

Licenses which provide for copyright termination as the result of a recipient suing (or otherwise engaging) the licensor have one very significant difference from this one: the content being distributed under the license can be directly inspected by anyone who has a copy to determine the validity of a copyright infringement claim.

Works, particularly models, distributed under OpenMDW do not have that attribute. If a recipient believes that the model infringes on their copyrights, the only way that can be 'proven' (for some definition of proven) is to execute the model on a computer and feed it inputs in order to generate the claimed infringing output. The infringement, or lack thereof, cannot be determined purely by inspecting the model.

The result of this could be that a party who claims the model infringes on their copyright and takes action against the model's licensor cannot participate in generating evidence of the claimed infringement after they have taken the action, because they no longer have permission to make use of the model in any capacity. If the process of trying their claim requires additional supporting evidence to be provided, that will have to be generated by a third party who is not an actor in the claim itself (presumably any attorneys or other representatives hired by the claimant would also be unable to execute the model since they are participants in the action against the licensor).

On Fri, Aug 14, 2026, at 18:24, Luis Villa wrote:
> 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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