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

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 5:45 PM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:
>
> For AI licenses, OSI doesn't have looser or stricter standards; they are evaluated against both OSD https://opensource.org/osd as with any license, and the OSAID https://opensource.org/ai/open-source-ai-definition which is applicable to licenses designed to be used on AI. Beyond that, the evaluation is the same.
>
> If, for whatever reason, people believe there should be other tests (like "advancing software freedom" or "Freedom Zero"), I'd be interested in hearing that (although several have already advanced those), but in order for the Board to understand what those tests are and how to apply them to licenses, I think we'd need to hear specificity on how to apply those tests in practice (both against the recently submitted AI licenses: ModelGo-Zero, ModelGo-Attribution, and OpenMDW-1.1, as well as against future licenses). I'd also like to understand if those tests are equally applicable to non-AI licenses, and if not, why not.

Just to be clear, the OSI already is supposed to consider "software
freedom", as I noted earlier, as stated at
https://opensource.org/licenses/review-process

The purpose of OSI license review is, in part, to "Ensure approved
licenses conform to the Open Source Definition *and* provide software
freedom".
(emphasis added - the important thing is that "conformance to the OSD"
and "providing software freedom" are not equivalent)

and

"[The license-review participants'] consensus that a license does not
ensure software freedom may, in some cases, be the justification for
rejecting a license even where they cannot identify a specific aspect
of the OSD or the approval guidelines below that is not met."

That's not an articulated "test" but since adoption of that language
in . . . 2019 or so? . . . the OSI has at least in some cases made
reference to the concept of "software freedom" in explaining its
dispositions of particular submitted licenses. And I explained the
historical reason for this: Artful license drafters were arguing that
the OSI was compelled to approve any license with some sort of novel
controversial provision if a clear conflict with a specific OSD
provision could not be identified. In some respects this is a
recognition of problems with the OSD itself.

Richard