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Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#31

Post by pbhjpbhj »

vkjv wrote: post #26
lmm wrote: post #8

There is no way to be safe from patents. Anyone could have them, they don't have to declare them, and they're written in deliberately obtuse ways so that you have no way of finding relevant patents before you're sued for infringing them (you don't have to have copied, or even be aware of, any patented thing to violate a patent). It's just a hazard of the software industry. The BSD license says nothing about patents,…

"You could develop a library in-house in a clean room and it could still infringe someone else's patent." IANAL, but, it is my understanding that if that's the case the patent wouldn't hold up to the novel requirement.

Patents are granted on who files for the patent first. The invention protected must be non-obvious to the notional skilled practitioner in the relevant arts and should never have been disclosed in public before (novelty).

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#32

Post by stupidcar »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #19
SixSigma wrote: post #13

No. The license has a chilling clause that says if you ever suggest that any Facebook patent might be invalid, your license to use their code is automatically revoked. And in corporate world, that means any comment of any of your employees in an official capacity. Edit downvotes, well maybe the text of the clause will help > The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, for anyone th…

…if you ever suggest that any Facebook patent might be invalid, your license to use their code is automatically revoked. This is not correct — your license to use any patent of Facebook's that covers the software is revoked. You are still not infringing copyright on the software by using it, but you will no longer be protected by Facebook's patent grant, which is in addition to your license to use the software. This…

While it's true that you only lose your license to the patents, not the code, I don't see how you can argue the grant isn't a restriction of your freedom? Surely any license whose conferred rights are predicated on the recipient not being able to take particular actions, up to and including saying particular things, must be considered to be restricting freedoms, even if those restrictions are in exchange for other freedoms granted?

Of course, all free software licenses involve some exchange of freedoms: You give up your ability to publish closed-source modifications of the software in exchange for being able to use and modify it at all. The question is whether the freedoms you are asked to give up are reasonable in exchange for what you gain. A patent grant that restricts your freedom to launch patent infringement litigation against other users of the software seem reasonable to me. Whereas a grant that is invalidated simply by alleging, through any action, that any of the original author's patents are invalid, does not.

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#33

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lmm wrote: post #8

There is no way to be safe from patents. Anyone could have them, they don't have to declare them, and they're written in deliberately obtuse ways so that you have no way of finding relevant patents before you're sued for infringing them (you don't have to have copied, or even be aware of, any patented thing to violate a patent). It's just a hazard of the software industry. The BSD license says nothing about patents,…

>Anyone could have them, they don't have to declare them, and they're written in deliberately obtuse ways so that you have no way of finding relevant patents before you're sued for infringing them (you don't have to have copied, or even be aware of, any patented thing to violate a patent).

Not "anyone" could have them only people who have their details registered as patentees at the relevant patent office, eg USPTO or WIPO.

Patent claims are written in a legal way as they define the monopoly the patent protects, it's necessary not to use normal language as they must at once be legally precise and also define as broad a field to serve the patentee. Claims are drafted by, or for, the patentee.

The patent description must, in order to comply with the relevant laws, disclose the invention in a way that makes it possible for a skilled worker in the art to repeat the invention. If it does not the application should fail. Patent description must include at least one concrete implementation of the invention but the invention itself can cover many different implementations. The description needs to support the breadth of the claims.

Yes, practically - especially in the USA in the past - so-called submarine patents could surface out of the depths. If you're working in an area of technology you should be using patents both to advance your knowledge of the market and to ensure you're not in breech of other's IPR.

Your parenthetical remarks are entirely correct however.

Patent infringement isn't just a hazard of the software industry it's a part of how all technological industries work in countries that use patents (nearly all countries [may be all established ones?]).

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#34

Post by pbhjpbhj »

stupidcar wrote: post #11
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also here, which IMHO is more informative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8901357

Yeah, this discussion points out an important point that it's easy to miss if you scan Facebook's patent grant: The license Facebook grants you is invalidated by any action that even alleges that any of Facebook's patents is invalid. E.g. if you so much as Tweet that one of Facebook's patents, even one entirely unrelated to React, is invalid, you've lost your license. Compare this with the patent grant in the Apache…

This is an interesting thing (to me!).

Can you give a license that says, words to the effect, that if one accuses you of a crime then the license is revoked? This would make licenses beholden to not report the licensor for criminal activities.

IPR infringements tend to be torts, which is different, but I'm still interested in how far you can push license terms before something in the law, USC here presumably, pushes back and says "woah, you can't do that".

Anyone?

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#36

Post by sanxiyn »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #29
lettergram wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI my favorite patent ever is from Facebook: "A social networking system user may associate an emoji representing the user's emotional reaction with a content item presented by the social networking system. The user is presented with one or more emoji maintained by the social networking system and selects an emoji for associating with the content item." [1] http://www.google.com.ar/patents/US8918339 That's right fol…

Actually, if you RTFClaims (which is the first thing you should read), they patented asking for payment for using emoji to respond to content. Which is ridiculous from a business perspective as well.

What is ridiculous about it? LINE is earning millions of dollars from exactly that.

On the other hand, I think the patent is invalid because LINE predates this like a year or so.

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#37

Post by cma »

kibibu wrote: post #9
lmm wrote: post #8

There is no way to be safe from patents. Anyone could have them, they don't have to declare them, and they're written in deliberately obtuse ways so that you have no way of finding relevant patents before you're sued for infringing them (you don't have to have copied, or even be aware of, any patented thing to violate a patent). It's just a hazard of the software industry. The BSD license says nothing about patents,…

As I understand it, you're better off not looking for relevant patents so that you can claim accidental infringement rather than wilful infringement

Only if your company would survive half-damages and not survive full-damages, or probably a more complex weighted calculation. Doesn't seem too likely, especially if looking can help you do trivial workarounds to avoid infringing at all.

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#38

Post by fncypants »

stupidcar wrote: post #11
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also here, which IMHO is more informative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8901357

Yeah, this discussion points out an important point that it's easy to miss if you scan Facebook's patent grant: The license Facebook grants you is invalidated by any action that even alleges that any of Facebook's patents is invalid. E.g. if you so much as Tweet that one of Facebook's patents, even one entirely unrelated to React, is invalid, you've lost your license. Compare this with the patent grant in the Apache…

No. In context it refers to "filing any ... action." Lawsuits and similar procedures in other legal forums are often called actions. Think the movie called A Civil Action staring John Travolta about a civil lawsuit. The concern here is not how it is triggered (it must be by a lawsuit or something similar) but rather the balance of power it provides if you get into a war with Facebook, since you cannot undo having used their software.

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#39

Post by jonas21 »

Facebook is granting you additional rights on top of the BSD license. In the worst case, where you do something that causes the patent rights to be revoked, you're still left with the same rights you have under the BSD license.

This is unambiguously safer to use than if they had released it under a vanilla BSD license. As for why Facebook did this, they're most likely trying to give away additional rights while still maintaining the ability to use these patents defensively, in the event someone sues them for infringing a different patent.

It's ironic that people are freaking out about this. If anything, we should be encouraging more companies to give away patent rights. Sure, it's not as broad as the Apache license, but it's a lot better than the default (nothing), and given some of the ridiculous patent lawsuits that have been brought against Facebook, Google, and others, I can understand why they'd want to avoid restricting their ability to use their patents defensively.

Re: Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?

#40

Post by DannyBee »

jonas21 wrote: post #39

Facebook is granting you additional rights on top of the BSD license. In the worst case, where you do something that causes the patent rights to be revoked, you're still left with the same rights you have under the BSD license. This is unambiguously safer to use than if they had released it under a vanilla BSD license. As for why Facebook did this, they're most likely trying to give away additional rights while still…

"Facebook is granting you additional rights on top of the BSD license. In the worst case, where you do something that causes the patent rights to be revoked, you're still left with the same rights you have under the BSD license. This is unambiguously safer to use than if they had released it under a vanilla BSD license. As for why Facebook did this, they're most likely trying to give away additional rights while still maintaining the ability to use these patents defensively, in the event someone sues them for infringing a different patent. "

This is 100% totally and completely wrong :)

The BSD license normally includes an implied patent license.

It says " Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met .. "

This grants an implied patent license to the patents necessary to actually do this, as long as you meet the restrictions.

This is actually well settled law. You don't get to give people stuff unrestricted, and say "you can use this for free", and then say "just kidding, what i meant was, you can use this for free as long as you pay me for the patents"

However, when you do what facebook has done, and give an explicit license, you have overwritten the terms of that implied license, and you get no implied license.

So it is not only "not unambiguously safer", you are not "left with the same rights you had under the bsd license if it is revoked".

This is because if you revoke the explicit grant, you get nothing in terms of patents. But the implicit grant is not revokable unless you violate the copyright license.

So sorry, but this is not "better than the default" and does not in fact, help you.

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