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

[Rob Landley]

On 8/19/26 23:43, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> But one that is triggered by a copyright assertion is.

Copyright and patent are categorically different.

The 5 year old who wrote "axe cop" had an automatic copyright on it, 
which had to be licensed to produce the series.

So did my then ten year old nephew's fanfic about his Halo character, 
and every vacation picture my nieces took. Didn't even need to file 
anything. That copyright could be violated, and a custodian could assert 
that copyright on behalf of the child (or license the work for use as a 
news photo, etc), or they could do it themselves as an adult years 
later. You can have a copyright without even KNOWING you have a 
copyright, and find out about it later.

The group of people who have patents is far smaller and far more 
intentional. It regularly takes YEARS to get a patent, can be quite an 
expensive process, requires the help of professionals (even if you don't 
have a patent lawyer help you file, which is like doing your own taxes, 
a patent doesn't exist without a patent clerk reviewing and approving 
it). A patent can't EXIST without being filed, published, and a patent 
number issued for it.

The anthropic settlement was over a class action suit due to one 
company's product violating half a million (already professionally 
licensed) copyrights simultaneously. How often are patent suits granted 
class action status? How often do half a million patentholders 
simultaneously sue the same violator over the same product?

This license is clearly an attempt to prevent a recurrence of the 
anthropic suit, by creating a license that applies to the situation of 
"what if someone violates half a million copyrights simultaneously all 
at once and doesn't want to be sued".

Somehow they want OSI to approve the result as "open source", and you 
seem to be taking them seriously.

Rob