Open Source Guy

MongoDB's lawsuit against FerretDB has generally been understood as a dispute over FerretDB's use of the MongoDB name and brand, or over marketing claims such as "MongoDB compatible" and "an alternative to MongoDB." MongoDB itself has strongly argued that

Where Japanese IP Advice Can Miss Contracts, Corporate Practice, and Community Norms I regularly receive requests for advice on the use of licenses, primarily Open Source licenses, and often have occasion to provide my own interpretation. In doing so, I s

Three years ago, OSI began the process of creating the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID). I was involved in this long journey from the beginning as a volunteer, but at the time my strongest concern was simply that we must not undermine the values of the o

Can AI be used to reimplement software with nearly the same functionality, and then even change its license as a result, in what might be described as a form of license washing? This issue has been discussed repeatedly for some time. Yet, setting aside di

California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), approved by Governor Newsom in October 2025, sets out a statewide age assurance framework for operating systems and app stores. It requires operating system providers to present an age and date-of-birth de

Copyright issues in AI model training and generated outputs are widely discussed, but less attention is paid to how copyright licenses, the actual mechanism for granting permission, shape these workflows. Unlike traditional software, which is often descri

Recently, regarding the open-weights AI model "Nemotron 3" released by NVIDIA, there are scattered media reports mistakenly describing it as open source. Because there is concern that these reports encourage ignoring the usage risks of the NVIDIA Open Mod

When GitHub Copilot first appeared, many developers viewed it as an assistive tool for coding. The honest impression of most developers was likely that while it was useful, it was not a tool to which one could entrust the entire coding process. However, i

When GitHub Copilot was launched in 2021, the fact that its training data included a vast amount of Open Source code publicly available on GitHub attracted significant attention, sparking lively debates regarding licensing. While there were issues concern

The Munich I Regional Court has delivered a sweeping victory for GEMA, Germany's music rights organization, in its lawsuit against OpenAI, the operator of ChatGPT. The court substantially granted GEMA's claims for injunctive relief, disclosure of informat