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

[Rob Landley]

On 8/26/26 09:57, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> Dolan's message added also very practical examples of why this 
> theoretical case of "freedom 0 denial" (as Simon put it) is not only 
> illogical but also, being tied to the very practical example of SCO vs 
> IBM, it could be a net positive.

I helped defend SCO vs IBM someone prominently for several years, and 
that argument is bullshit.

EVERYBODY has a copyright. Technically you have a copyright on the email 
you just sent. Babies can have copyrights.

A patent cannot be obtained without malice of forethought and months if 
not years of follow-through.

> I still don't see how the termination clause would be a bad thing for 
> the open source ecosystem. What am I missing?

The anthropic settlement covered about 300,000 authors:

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/27/nx-s1-5904606/anthropic-vs-bartz-ai-copyright-lawsuit-pros-cons

Under this license, if any of those authors had a day job requiring them 
to use Claude, participating in the class action lawsuit would have 
either cost them their job or hurt their employer depending how it was 
interpreted.

This isn't complicated, just greedy and stupid.

Rob