Updated OpenMDW-1.1 license advances open model ecosystem through permissive licensing and intellectual property protections

SAN FRANCISCO, May 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the release of the OpenMDW-1.1 license, an updated open license framework designed specifically for AI model distributions. Coinciding with the update, NVIDIA plans to adopt the license framework across future releases of its Cosmos, Isaac GR00T, Ising, and Nemotron open model families.

The announcement signals growing momentum behind open licensing for AI systems, as organizations seek alternatives to restrictive licensing terms and fragmented legal frameworks. With OpenMDW, NVIDIA adopts a model‑centric, permissive license that provides a unified legal framework for models and their related artifacts, purpose‑built to enable the open, responsible, and effective sharing of these model materials.

"Adoption of OpenMDW gives organizations greater confidence to build, contribute, and deploy AI systems in the open, helping accelerate the growth of interoperable AI ecosystems," said Jim Zemlin, CEO, Linux Foundation. "By adopting OpenMDW for its major open AI model families, NVIDIA is helping establish a clear and permissive framework for sharing AI models at global scale."

The NVIDIA Cosmos, Isaac GR00T, Ising, and Nemotron open model families span some of the fastest-growing areas of domain-specific AI, including agentic AI,  quantum computing, robotics and simulation. The adoption of OpenMDW1.1 will advance these open model ecosystems and give developers rights to train, modify, contribute, redistribute and deploy open models.

"Open innovation is foundational to AI progress, and broad access to models, data, and tools is essential to accelerating breakthroughs," said Kari Briski, vice president of generative AI, NVIDIA. "By adopting the Linux Foundation's OpenMDW framework for NVIDIA open model families, we're helping establish a simpler, more consistent standard for open models at scale."

Originally launched in 2025 by the Linux Foundation and the PyTorch Foundation, OpenMDW was created to address a growing gap in AI model licensing. Many open-weight AI models have traditional open source software licenses not designed for AI artifacts or custom AI licenses that imposed restrictive usage limitations.

The OpenMDW license provides a single legal framework to support a variety of AI technologies, including models (including architecture, weight and parameters), code (object code, source code or scripts), documentation, or data.

OpenMDW-1.1 is now publicly available for adoption by AI model providers and developers worldwide. To learn more about OpenMDW, visit https://openmdw.ai.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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SOURCE The Linux Foundation