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

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 3:10 PM Richard Fontana via License-review <
license-review at lists.opensource.org> wrote:

> 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.


Yes, and as I’ve pointed out repeatedly since 2019[1], the addition of this
test with zero articulation of any definition of the term, or any tests, or
anything other than “we know it when we see it” invites exactly the sort of
endless argument we see in this thread.

Is CAL violating “software freedom”? no one can say, so we’ll argue over it
for a year. Is this license violating software freedom? no one knows what
that means, so no one can say, so wellllp

I actually do think values should form a part of the license-review
process, and there’s an interesting discussion to be had (maybe[2]) about
some of what this license does. But “software freedom” isn’t a value anyone
at OSI can articulate (especially not “software freedom, but different from
what FSF means by it”) so instead of discussing values we’ll end up
screaming about an ineffable and undefined term, hoping the current board
agrees with us.

[1] I see at least five posts on the topic in 2019 and 2020 before I gave
up; those emails do not include archive URLs but I assume they’re out there
somewhere.
[2] gotta say, seeing giant walls of text referring to “lebensraum” with no
intervention from the moderators is… not encouraging me to stay subscribed.
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