[License-review] ModelGo Attribution License, Version 2.0 FINAL CALL FOR COMMENTS
Pamela Chestek
pamela at chesteklegal.com
Tue Sep 22 17:45:04 UTC 2026
Hi Moming,
Your response is quite troubling to me. I read it as saying that the
disparate treatment of copyright owners versus mere users of the
software is intentional. As Joshua Gay described in the OpenMDW thread,
the motive for the patent termination provision was because patents
threatened the singular goal of the open source license, which is
unfettered freedom to use the software. In other words, the open source
license grants virtually unlimited right to use the software, but a
patent aggressor can stop that use with a patent claim. The response was
to withdraw the patent aggressor's patent (and sometimes copyright)
license to use the software. So I find the intentional maintenance of
the ability to sue a user troubling, given the historical basis for the
patent termination clause.
I also note that the one of the requirements for new licenses
<https://opensource.org/licenses/review-process> is "The license does
not have terms that structurally put the licensor in a more favored
position than any licensee." This does put the licensor in a more
favored position than a licensee.
I also don't understand why you are characterizing this license as a
"single-grantor license" and distinguish it from Apache on that basis.
All licenses are "single grantor," Apache included, that is, a single
contributor is granting a license to their own contribution. If you are
saying that the Apache license may be a grant from multiple licensors
because it may be sublicensing from inbound licensors, the same is true
of the ModelGo Attribution License, which is also sublicensable. So I'm
not following why you think that your situation is, can be, or should be
different from how the Apache license works.
Pam
Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
4641 Post St.
Unit 4316
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
www.chesteklegal.com
On 9/21/2026 3:31 AM, Moming Duan wrote:
> Hi Pam and All,
>
>
> Thank you for walking through the scenarios. Let me try again with
> your own examples, and please tell me if I get any of this wrong.
>
> On my earlier point: that was my reading of the definitions (I'm not a
> lawyer), and I may have stretched it. I think your reading is the
> better one. Licensor is the rights owner whose grant is in Section
> 2.1. This also settles "the" versus "a" for me: for this clause there
> is one counterparty. This license has no mechanism for a distributor
> to pass on patent rights of its own; every patent right it grants
> comes from the Licensor. If someone downstream has patented their
> improvement, that grant happens outside this license. So far as this
> clause is concerned, there really is just the one.
>
> Your three cases, exactly as they operate:
>
> - C sues User A, who only runs the model: C keeps the license.
> - C sues User B, a distributor: C keeps the license.
> - C sues the Licensor: C loses the license.
>
> The license is one grant from one grantor, and the exchange inside it
> is bilateral. The Licensor grants the practice of the Licensed
> Materials and, by 2.1(a)(iii), of Derivative Materials too. The
> licensee's side of the exchange is not to turn a patent claim against
> the grantor. When the clause fires, the Licensor takes back the one
> thing that was given, from the one party who took it and then attacked
> the giver with it. The Derivative Materials part follows from the same
> place: 2.1(a)(iii) puts their practice inside the grant, so a claim
> that a Derivative infringes is a claim that the granted practice is
> unlawful.
>
> Apache-2.0 looks different because its shape is different. Its patent
> licenses come from many contributors, and any claim about the work,
> against anyone, even a cross-claim, ends the patent licenses You hold.
> A single-grantor license has no such machinery, so we chose the
> narrower trigger. You lose the license only by suing the grantor;
> nobody loses anything for enforcing a patent against another user.
> Under OpenMDW-1.1, termination can follow a copyright claim, a suit
> you voluntarily joined rather than started, or a claim brought against
> anyone at all. Under MG-BY, the clause fires on one thing only: a
> patent suit you yourself initiate against the Licensor. It reaches
> nothing beyond what our own grant covers.
>
> On OSD 5 itself. Everyone who holds the license holds it on the same
> terms and loses it the same way. I can't find a licensee who gets less
> than another licensee. The Licensor is not a licensee; it gives the
> license rather than holds it. Apache has the same asymmetry between a
> Contributor, who grants patent rights and can have them taken back,
> and a plain recipient, who grants nothing and so has nothing to lose.
> I haven't seen anyone call that discrimination. Our clause has that
> shape with one giver instead of many, and I don't see a classification
> of persons in it, which is what I understand OSD 5 to be about.
>
> To press one point, respectfully: I am not aware that OSI has ever
> held that a patent-termination shield must protect everyone to satisfy
> OSD 5. That would be a new principle, and if the review establishes
> it, I will revise the clause accordingly. Thanks.
>
>
> Best,
> Moming
>
> Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com> 于2026年9月21日周一 11:44写道：
>
> Moming,
>
> I'm not following what you're saying. As I understand McCoy's
> point, it is this:
>
> - Licensor is any contributor who added copyrightable content;
>
> - User A is someone who is using Licensor's version of the
> software but has not contributed any copyrightable content and is
> not distributing the software;
>
> -User B is someone who is using Licensor's version of the
> software, has not contributed any copyrightable content, but is
> distributing the software, who you are characterizing as a
> sublicensor of Licensor's rights;
>
> - User C is the person who owns the allegedly infringed patent.
>
> ===============
>
> User C sues a Licensor for patent infringement - the license
> terminates.
>
> User C sues User A for for patent infringement - the license does
> not terminate because User A is not a Licensor of anything, they
> are just using the software.
>
> User C sues User B for patent infringement - the license does not
> terminate. First, characterizing User B as a sublicensor may not
> be a correct assumption - why wouldn't User C say "no, I'm not a
> sublicensee of User B, I'm a direct licensee of Licensor who I
> haven't sued, so the license doesn't terminate"? But even assuming
> User B is a sublicensor, it doesn't terminate the license. User B
> is a sublicensor, not */"the /*Licensor," i.e., the "rights owner"
> per your definition, so the license doesn't terminate.
>
> That is the discrimination that I understand McCoy to be
> describing. The license only terminates if User C sues someone who
> contributed copyrightable content, because those are the only
> people (or companies) who have a license that can be terminated.
> Everyone else can still be sued for copyright infringement.
>
> The use of the word "the" in "the Licensor" in the termination
> section is problematic for another reason. The corpus may have
> many licensors. I think the more natural reading is that only the
> license from the person being sued terminates, not all of them. If
> it said "any legal action against */_a_/* Licensor alleging that
> the Licensed Materials and/or Derivative Materials infringe any
> patent worldwide" would terminate all of them. But that doesn't
> solve the problem described above with mere users, not
> contributors, being the defendant in the patent suit.
>
> Pam
>
> Pamela S. Chestek
> Chestek Legal
> 4641 Post St.
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> Unit 4316
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> +1 919-800-8033 <tel:(919)%20800-8033>
> pamela at chesteklegal.com
> www.chesteklegal.com <http://www.chesteklegal.com>
>
>
> On 9/18/2026 2:58 AM, Moming Duan wrote:
>> Hi McCoy and all,
>>
>>
>> OSD 5 says the license must not discriminate against any person
>> or group of persons. Here, Licensor is a role in the license, not
>> a person. And the license itself says how the role moves. The
>> Section 2.1 grant is sublicensable, and 2.2(a)(i) requires a copy
>> of this License to travel with every Distribution. Even the
>> definition of "Licensed Materials", things "Distributed by the
>> Licensor", only really works if each distributor is the Licensor
>> for what it distributes. So a licensee who passes the model or a
>> Derivative Material on is granting the license onward. It stands
>> as Licensor to the people it supplied, and a patent claim by
>> those people does trigger termination.
>>
>> About your May 2025 conclusion, I want to be precise. You wrote
>> then that this termination provision was not an OSD violation but
>> an uptake issue, and that conclusion was about the Derivative
>> Materials part, which is your Q4:
>> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2025-May/005764.html
>>
>> The OSD 5 question, whether the trigger should reach beyond the
>> Licensor, is new in this final call, and you yourself put it as
>> "arguably". So I read it as an open question rather than a
>> settled one, and not something to concede on my own.
>>
>> It's true that a user who never distributed anything, and sues
>> another licensee, does not lose the license. That is deliberate.
>> The patent grant has one source, and the promise not to assert
>> runs to that source. A dispute between two people who never
>> granted each other anything is outside that exchange.
>>
>> So my reading is that the clause, as written, does not
>> discriminate against any person or group, and I'd like to keep
>> the current wording.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Moming
>>
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