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Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

issues.apache.org

21–30 of 391 posts

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#21
Interesting note from the discussion:

> As noted earlier, the availability of a GPLv2 license does not preclude inclusion by an ASF project. If patent rights are not conferred by the 3-clause BSD and required by ASLv2 then would not these licenses be incompatible?

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> he has discussed the matter with FB's counsel and the word is that the FB license is intentionally incompatible. It is hard to make the argument that it is compatible after hearing that.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#22
post #4

I really have no idea why react is so popular with such a silly license. I agree with this move. There are plenty of OSS projects out there without patent thing attached to its license so no reason to use react.

Considering almost every single large tech company is using React, presumably there's not much reason for concern? IANAL. But you're not wrong, preact is a great alternative to react and it comes with a permissive license.

Thank you for telling us about preact. Is there a good react-native alternative? Our team has bound our codebase pretty tightly to react and react-native (optimized for code sharing).

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering almost every single large tech company is using React, presumably there's not much reason for concern? IANAL. But you're not wrong, preact is a great alternative to react and it comes with a permissive license.

My most recent 'big' fortune 500 company put me under very strict legal terms regarding what type of software I was allowed to use. Any code I didn't write 100% myself had to be approved by legal before it could be used in software I wrote for them. No, seriously, that is what the contract said. In reality, the bulk of developers used whatever they wanted with no consideration. I assume other contractors were under s…

>My most recent 'big' fortune 500 company put me under very strict legal terms regarding what type of software I was allowed to use. Any code I didn't write 100% myself had to be approved by legal before it could be used in software I wrote for them.

Back in the day, this was the norm.

>In reality, the bulk of developers used whatever they wanted with no consideration.

This wasn't - it was grounds for termination.

I remember stuff like - (for Windows C++) you can use Microsoft MFC and Microsoft STL - anything else you write from scratch.

Legal wasn't very flexible back then.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#24
post #18

Finally, people are beginning to realize the insanity of this entire PATENTS file situation! When I first brought up how misguided people were for embracing React and projects with this license, I was downvoted to hell on HN. But really, everyone, THINK ABOUT IT. This is a company that glorifies and celebrates IP theft from others, and lionizes their employees who successfully clone others’ projects. They’ve built th…

Was Zuck taking some Business & Econ classes in his school days? This is from 2002:

https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#25
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Facebook has done anything yet. The ticket was only opened 4 hours ago.

Facebook relicensed RocksDB to dual Apache and GPLv2 3 hours ago: https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/pull/2589

Yes! People are also now starting to pressure Facebook to change React's license.

https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#26
I was wondering about a similar issue for zstd compression library. It has a similar BSD+Patentsfile thing.

There is an issue with a related discussion about it going for more than a year:

https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335

Last update is interesting. Someone did a search and looked for any patents FB filed for and couldn't find any in last year. So somehow based on that they decided things are "OK".

To quote:

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US allows to patent up to a year after the publication, allowing to conclude that ZSTD remains free of patents (?) - suggesting this "The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice (...)" from PATENTS file has no legal meaning (?)

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Anyone care to validate how true that statement is?

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#27
As the other comments say, RocksDB is going to be dual licensed both GPLv2 and Apache. What's the advantage to doing so? If I choose to consume the library via the Apache license, I'd never have to contribute back code; doesn't this invalidate the copyleft of GPLv2?

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#28
post #18

Finally, people are beginning to realize the insanity of this entire PATENTS file situation! When I first brought up how misguided people were for embracing React and projects with this license, I was downvoted to hell on HN. But really, everyone, THINK ABOUT IT. This is a company that glorifies and celebrates IP theft from others, and lionizes their employees who successfully clone others’ projects. They’ve built th…

> They’ve built their entire business on the back of open source software that wasn’t ever encumbered with the sort of nonsense they’ve attached to their own projects.

So did Amazon apparently and others. At least Google have open sourced many interesting and useful projects so they have given back. Microsoft have been open sourcing things lately too. Others so so.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#29
post #12
post #2

Can someone explain how this can affect to projects using react, as in a part of a product of a company or personal projects? Thanks I found this [1]: > FB is not interested in pursuing the more draconian possibilities of the BSD+patents license. If that is true, there is actually very little difference between BSD+patents and the Apache license. As such, relicensing should make little if any pragmatic difference to…

Facebook has reserved its rights with their license and they can decide to enforce it at any time. Personal projects should be ok, but commercial projects should involve a discussion with legal. If the company thinks it's possible that they end up in a lawsuit with FB, it won't be allowed. For those who get caught unawares, they will have to move off react if possible, or seriously consider settling.

For personal projects, my interest here is in whether or not the patents license is compatible with other free software licenses (say GPLV3). That might be a consideration for some people.
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