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

issues.apache.org

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

#281

Post by developit »

Lazare wrote: post #56
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #14

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.

If you're concerned about React, then Preact is actually significantly worse. Consider: The risk for React is based on 1) speculation that Facebook has patents on core React concepts and 2) the fact that patent grant that comes with React terminates in some situations if you end up in conflict with Facebook. So for safety, it might be better to make sure you use code that Facebook has no patents on, which (if (1) abo…

This is not true, since Preact only implements the same software interface. Its internals are fundamentally different and not a derivative work.

Software interfaces cannot be patented - this has been upheld in every court, most recently in Google V Oracle.

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

#282

Post by kakarot »

madeofpalk wrote: post #153
kakarot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q

The irony of using Youtube, a platform that rose to fame after hosting pirated Viacom content, to highlight IP theft.

The real irony would be that if I found this video hosted anywhere else, it would be IP theft because the creators post it to Youtube. Your comment is unnecessary.

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

#283

Post by developit »

songzme wrote: post #22
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #14

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.

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).

We've begun work on a NativeScript integration that would meet this need. It's early stage though.

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

#284

Post by developit »

anthonybullard wrote: post #92
tomelders wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preact is not an alternative I'd reccomend. It's riddled with very serious bugs. I've found it incredibly difficult to work with.

Could I ask what those bugs we're and if you had filed an issue for them? I don't have any deployed projects based on it, but I've played with it and talked to the main dev a couple of times - he's usually very on top of it.

I'd be curious to hear about this too - I don't see any issues filed or commented on by him, perhaps the bugs are more perceptual mismatches with his React experience as opposed to actual bugs. We only recently released preact/debug, which brings with it some of the guardrails React ships by default - maybe without those people run into issues.

FWIW there are hundreds of companies (some very very large) using Preact in production. If there were showstopper bugs, they'd be fixed immediately.

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

#285

Post by developit »

mlsarecmg wrote: post #221
chrisco255 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is those other libraries could be in violation of any patents that Facebook may or may not have with regards to React. Perhaps they have a patent on virtual DOM? That would mean your usage of Inferno, Preact, Vue, or Angular 2+ would violate the patent.

That would frankly be impossible. All JSX boils down to is h(name, properties, children) and that is literally it. Each reconciler is different, uses another v-dom, etc. If you wanted to patent react, you patent the mere use of functions. And not just that there are about 20 years of fair use of similar principles, even for jsx in particular which evolved from mozillas e4x and otherwise keeps to basic xml markup and…

Also impossible because JSX is independent of React. The specification is only subject to a standard Copyright and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

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

#287

Post by discordianfish »

cyphar wrote: post #185
discordianfish wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I understand the patent grant too. Are people here really confusing a grant with some sort of restricting of their freedom or do we miss something? I frankly don't want to believe everyone, including apache foundation, believes this without getting their facts straight..?

The problem is that unlike the Apache 2.0 or GPLv3 patent grants, the React license restricts you from suing Facebook for _any_ patent (even non-software patents). And note that that Facebook doesn't reciprocate that, and so if they decide to sue you for any alleged patent infringement then you cannot counter-sue for patent infringement they may be committing if you are using React. Also it makes you far weaker in ne…

In what way does it restrict you from suing Facebook?

From what I can tell the patent grant is only beneficial to users of the software, not facebook. And it exists to address the concerns people might have that, if they use any facebook tech, they might risk getting sued. If you decide to sue, you're as good off as before. But if you don't sue, you can be sure facebook will never sue you either for violation of the patents they granted.

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

#288

Post by Melanie454 »

khuey wrote: post #277
captainmuon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there was no patent grant, and just the BSD license? Then you have no patent protection in the first place! You are in the same situation as when the patent grant expired because you sued them. I don't see how this is any better. You do not give them a license to use any patent. You are right that in practice the non-enforcement means that they can willy-nilly use your patents. But if we are arguing about fac…

Yes, you're right that "BSD+patent"+"revoked patent grant because you sued Facebook over another patent" is pretty much the same as just BSD from the start. Licensing software you know you have patents on under BSD only with no patent grant would be pretty awful, of course. If Facebook wanted to be the good guys here they would license under Apache 2.0 or write their own symmetric patent grant. They already relicense…

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

#290

Post by bhickey »

smichel17 wrote: post #278
bhickey wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, be cautious. The OSI has approved a number of bad licenses. The UPL ( https://opensource.org/licenses/UPL ) stands out to me as one that should've been rejected.

Why?

The discussion around its approval was contentious. My reading is that it exists primarily as an Oracle CLA. The license wasn't rigorously reviewed by non-Oracle counsel and there's some worry about hidden landmines.

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-A...

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-S...

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