Linux Foundation Asks OSI to Approve OpenMDW-1.1 AI Model License as Reviewers Split Over Its Copyright Termination Clause

Overview

The Linux Foundation has asked the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to formally approve its OpenMDW-1.1 license for distributing AI models, opening a public review that has already surfaced sharp disagreement over a clause that terminates a licensee’s rights if they sue over copyright infringement, not just patents. Michael Dolan, the Linux Foundation’s SVP of Legal & Strategic Programs, submitted the license to OSI’s License Review Committee on August 13 on behalf of the Linux Foundation as license steward, posting the request to the organization’s public license-review mailing list.

What We Know

According to Dolan’s submission, OpenMDW — short for Open Model, Data, and Weights — is meant to solve a specific packaging problem: AI model releases typically bundle weights, architecture, documentation, and code under “different and overlapping intellectual property regimes (copyright, patent, sui generis database rights),” and existing OSI-approved licenses were “drafted primarily for software” and may not explicitly cover non-software artifacts like data and model parameters. OpenMDW-1.1 is pitched as “a single permissive instrument that grants rights in all such artifacts” — defined in the license as “Model Materials” — under all applicable IP regimes, conditioning distribution only on keeping the license text and notices intact and placing no restrictions on model outputs.

The submission describes OpenMDW-1.1 as closest in spirit to the MIT License and the Apache License 2.0. Like Apache-2.0, it includes a defensive litigation termination provision, but with a key difference: Dolan’s filing states that “Apache-2.0’s termination is limited to patent claims, whereas OpenMDW-1.1’s termination applies to both patent and copyright assertions (the sole substantive change from OpenMDW-1.0 to OpenMDW-1.1).” The license text itself, quoted in full in the submission, states that if a licensee “files, maintains, or voluntarily participates in a lawsuit against any person or entity asserting that the Model Materials directly or indirectly infringe any patent or copyright, then all rights and grants made to you hereunder are terminated, unless that lawsuit was in response to a corresponding lawsuit first brought against you.”

OpenMDW-1.0 was developed in 2025 by the Linux Foundation together with the PyTorch Foundation, and Dolan’s submission says more than eight organizations have released models under it, including IBM and the University of Luxembourg. For 1.1, the submission lists a broader adoption base: NVIDIA has applied the license to 19 of its models across the Cosmos, Ising, and Nemotron families, and, according to Dolan, “NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang announced that its latest Alpamayo models are using OpenMDW-1.1 as well.” Arcee AI has moved six of its Trinity models to the license, Poolside has adopted it for its Laguna S 2.1 models, and BAAI’s OpenSeek Small, ByteDance’s Seed-X series, and an IBM/Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation project called SaltMarsh have shipped under OpenMDW-1.0. OpenMDW-1.1 is not yet listed on the SPDX License List, though the predecessor version already carries the SPDX identifier “OpenMDW-1.0,” and Dolan says the Linux Foundation plans to submit 1.1 for SPDX listing in parallel with the OSI review.

The copyright-termination change is what has drawn the most scrutiny from reviewers. Richard Fontana of Red Hat, a longtime participant in OSI license review, wrote that the provision “seems to potentially go further than the more familiar kinds of defensive termination provisions we see in modern open source licenses,” noting that “Apache-2.0, MPL-2.0, and EPL-2.0 have defensive termination provisions limited to patent assertions and only terminating patent licenses.” Fontana raised a hypothetical to illustrate the scope: “suppose I believe that an OpenMDW-1.1-licensed model infringes my copyrights. I sue the model licensor, but now my copyright and patent rights to some Python code distributed (in some sense) along with the model are terminated.” He concluded that the OSI “will need to specifically deliberate over this issue.”

Eric Schultz, who describes himself on the list as a “Digital Autonomy and Open Source activist,” went further, arguing the clause functionally disarms copyright holders: “if a large enough company uses this license on their model and their model becomes ubiquitous… then effectively no one can enforce their own copyright without giving up access to the thing they need to do their job.” He called the provision “effectively just an amnesty for, depending on how courts rule, large scale copyright infringement by model creators,” and argued that existing open source software licenses already cover models: “Just use those and please stop trying to pretend like this is a brand new frontier.”

Pamela Chestek of Chestek Legal laid out the most detailed legal objection in a reply posted August 24. She argued that copyright and patent termination triggers are not equivalent because “copyright infringement requires copying,” meaning the licensor engaged in a “volitional act (whether lawful or unlawful),” and the license effectively grants “blanket immunity for that act.” In Chestek’s reading, “a completely non-culpable party has to give up a claim against what might be a deliberate, intentional, unlawful act, which is not the patent scenario” — a result she called “antithetical to open source principles,” adding that “open source developers get exploited enough without being exploited by their own community.” She said a model provider that believes its use of copyrighted material is lawful “should be willing to defend the claim, not absolve themselves of liability through contract.” Chestek also challenged the license’s “solely responsible for” disclaimer language governing rights clearance, citing Kenneth Adams’ contract-drafting manual to argue the phrasing reads as an obligation rather than a pure risk allocation, and recommended the Linux Foundation reword it as a recommendation rather than a duty. She said she would be open to approving the unmodified OpenMDW-1.0 version if that language were clarified, but is “opposed to version 1.1 because of the trigger of termination for a copyright infringement claim.”

Dolan defended the change in a follow-up posted to the list, saying the trigger was modeled on industry practice: “The NVIDIA Open Model License terminates on copyright or patent litigation alleging the model infringes and was the inspiration behind the change in OpenMDW-1.1,” he wrote, framing OpenMDW as an OSI-eligible alternative to proprietary model licenses. He also acknowledged the novelty of the request: “I am not aware of any other AI model-focused license having been submitted previously, and I apologize if we are pushing boundaries that OSI or this committee is not prepared to cover.”

What We Don’t Know

The License Review Committee has not issued a verdict, and the public thread remains active, with Chestek’s objection posted as recently as August 24. Dolan’s submission asked the committee to consider reviewing OpenMDW-1.0 alongside 1.1 if it prefers, but it is not yet clear whether OSI will evaluate the two versions separately, and no decision timeline has been posted to the list.

Why It Matters

OSI approval would be a first for a license built around AI model weights, data, and documentation rather than software alone, and the committee’s handling of the copyright-termination question could set a precedent for future model-specific licenses. NVIDIA, ByteDance, Arcee AI, Poolside, BAAI, and IBM have already published models under OpenMDW’s 1.0 or 1.1 terms, meaning the review’s outcome could carry weight beyond a single committee decision.