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Explaining React's license

code.facebook.com

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Re: Explaining React's license

#12
post #9

This is a defensive answer. Facebook doesn't even enumerate the React related patents, so you're left guessing about that. At the very least, they should maintain and up to date list of patents granted. What do they have to hide?

Probably the fact that they have no patents with regards to React...

Re: Explaining React's license

#13
post #6

This is in reply to the Apache Software Foundation decision to list the BSD + Patents license as a Category-X license. - Facebook gets attacked by meritless patent litigation - Facebook creates the BSD + Patents license, which has the following effect : > The patent grant says that if you're going to use the software we've released under it, you lose the patent license from us if you sue us for patent infringement. -…

> without first re-writing the entire front-end to not use React Do note this isn't necessarily the case, because nobody has yet found a patent that covers React.

This is what I find confusing, the blog post mentions a patent license that you are granted, but as you say, nobody is aware of any patent covering React. React's doesn't seem to use any novel technique in the field of CS.

But https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933... , the way I read it says they grant you a license to to "make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer" the React Software. They don't seem to give you a license to any patent.

Re: Explaining React's license

#14
post #6

This is in reply to the Apache Software Foundation decision to list the BSD + Patents license as a Category-X license. - Facebook gets attacked by meritless patent litigation - Facebook creates the BSD + Patents license, which has the following effect : > The patent grant says that if you're going to use the software we've released under it, you lose the patent license from us if you sue us for patent infringement. -…

> without first re-writing the entire front-end to not use React Do note this isn't necessarily the case, because nobody has yet found a patent that covers React.

True or not, is this the kind of power a company of Facebook's size should have over others? If something patentable was added to React, would there be a notice sent out? Let's also not forget that this applies to all of their open-source libraries, things like Immutable, GraphQL, Flux, Hack, HHVM, etc,...

Re: Explaining React's license

#15
Facebook's position on this is weird. Any company that wants to use react and avoid liability arising from Facebook's terms can do so easily by incorporating a subsidiary or wholly separate company and paying that company $1 to license the UI built on react. Maybe this is about fencing off Google/Amazon/Alibaba/etc who might be reluctant to do something that would be technically legal but something that a jury might take a dim view of. That seems to been the thesis behind Oracle v Google.

Re: Explaining React's license

#17
> Their decision was not a legal decision about the compatibility of projects with this license. As has always been the case, source code licensed under the Facebook BSD + Patents license can be combined with source code licensed under other open source licenses like BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0, and GPL.

What complete, tone deaf newspeak. If a BSD-licensed project uses code with a Facebook BSD license, the project is now Facebook BSD licensed. That means it's incompatible with the BSD license.

Re: Explaining React's license

#18
post #5

> We've been looking for ways around this and have reached out to ASF to see if we could try to work with them, but have come up empty. This, to me, is a significant warning sign. I was leery of the React license to begin with. But the community at large had _almost_ convinced me that it was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, Facebook's position as stated here is clearly that the license is weaponized for a reaso…

The fallback to BSD+Patents is simply BSD and should be evaluated by legal and corporate likewise.

Re: Explaining React's license

#20
post #5

> We've been looking for ways around this and have reached out to ASF to see if we could try to work with them, but have come up empty. This, to me, is a significant warning sign. I was leery of the React license to begin with. But the community at large had _almost_ convinced me that it was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, Facebook's position as stated here is clearly that the license is weaponized for a reaso…

The fallback to BSD+Patents is simply BSD and should be evaluated by legal and corporate likewise.

"Fallback"? Are you referring to Preact?
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