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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#101

Post by kevinflo »

I love love love love love react as a technology, but this is just awful. I believe any developer not on Facebook's payroll still contributing to React or React native at this point has a moral obligation to stop. I personally feel like such a fool for not taking all this seriously before the ASF gave me a wakeup call. React is a trojan horse into the open source community that Facebook purposely and maliciously steered over time to deepen their war chest. Maybe that's an overblown take, but they had a perfect opportunity here to prove me wrong and they didn't. The defensive cover they present here feels so paper thin.

Even if we paint all of their actions in the most favorable possible light, and even if the clause is a paper tiger as some have claimed, it doesn't matter. This is not how open source should work. We should not have to debate for years if a project's license is radioactive. Especially individual devs like myself who just want to use a great tool. We should be able to just use it, because it's open and that's what open means. This is so much worse than closed. It's closed masquerading as open.

Re: Explaining React's license

#102

Post by haeffin »

> I like that we clearly include a patent license in our repo. IMO it would be nice if more companies would choose this route too.

I don't get this. The Apache2 license also has a section on patents ...

Re: Explaining React's license

#103

Post by devdoomari »

kevinflo wrote: post #101

I love love love love love react as a technology, but this is just awful. I believe any developer not on Facebook's payroll still contributing to React or React native at this point has a moral obligation to stop. I personally feel like such a fool for not taking all this seriously before the ASF gave me a wakeup call. React is a trojan horse into the open source community that Facebook purposely and maliciously stee…

+1 on this.

I'm going for Preact (https://github.com/developit/preact) for React alternative.

Re: Explaining React's license

#104

Post by thesagan »

kevinflo wrote: post #101

I love love love love love react as a technology, but this is just awful. I believe any developer not on Facebook's payroll still contributing to React or React native at this point has a moral obligation to stop. I personally feel like such a fool for not taking all this seriously before the ASF gave me a wakeup call. React is a trojan horse into the open source community that Facebook purposely and maliciously stee…

I'm also going to hop on this train and move away from react. Personally and professionally, I don't like the direction the big players are taking the internet. (The closed, proprietary model.)

I suppose there's not much I can do about it except to move my efforts elsewhere, even if it affects my earnings.

Re: Explaining React's license

#105

Post by jaredklewis »

eridius wrote: post #35

> 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. There's a pretty obvious solution to this: relicense React. The fact that Facebook isn't even considering that is a pretty strong indication that they "weaponized" their license on purpose. > To this point, though, we haven't done a good job of explaining the reasons behind our BSD +…

I would patiently beg everyone to employ some basic reasoning.

Situation A: React is licensed under BSD + PATENTS. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. Turns out Facebook has a patent for something in react. They revoke your grant and counter sue you for infringing that patent. Long legal battle ensues.

Situation A: React is licensed under just BSD. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. Turns out Facebook has a patent for something in react. You never had a grant so Facebook counter sues you for infringing that patent. Long legal battle ensues.

Can someone coldly explain how anyone anywhere would be helped in any way by removing the patents file? Or is the BSD license the problem?

Re: Explaining React's license

#106

Post by haeffin »

bdcravens wrote: post #80
slackoverflower wrote: post #62

Of course they release this late on a Friday so it is does not get much reach. Facebook is very very evil - in every part of the company. Copying other's ideas (Snapchat) yet trying to stop other companies from copying them (this licensing).

I don't see it as "released". It's just the closing of a Github issue, not a press release. Do you feel that if a company is "evil", do you feel there's a moral imperative to not use their products? It seems to me there's a lot of "But React!" going on.

They put out a facebook post at about the same time that is something like a press release though.

Re: Explaining React's license

#107

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

jaredklewis wrote: post #105
eridius wrote: post #35

> 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. There's a pretty obvious solution to this: relicense React. The fact that Facebook isn't even considering that is a pretty strong indication that they "weaponized" their license on purpose. > To this point, though, we haven't done a good job of explaining the reasons behind our BSD +…

I would patiently beg everyone to employ some basic reasoning. Situation A: React is licensed under BSD + PATENTS. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. Turns out Facebook has a patent for something in react. They revoke your grant and counter sue you for infringing that patent. Long legal battle ensues. Situation A: React is licensed under just BSD. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. T…

People are worried about Situation C: React is licensed under BSD + PATENTS. You sue Facebook (or any corporate affiliate of theirs) for infringing on your widget patent. Facebook revokes your react license and counter sues you for copyright infringement.

The patents clause doesn't have anything to do with any patents on parts of React. It's a way for Facebook to make it so that anyone who wants to sue them for patent infringement can't use React.

Re: Explaining React's license

#108

Post by amluto »

jaredklewis wrote: post #105
eridius wrote: post #35

> 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. There's a pretty obvious solution to this: relicense React. The fact that Facebook isn't even considering that is a pretty strong indication that they "weaponized" their license on purpose. > To this point, though, we haven't done a good job of explaining the reasons behind our BSD +…

I would patiently beg everyone to employ some basic reasoning. Situation A: React is licensed under BSD + PATENTS. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. Turns out Facebook has a patent for something in react. They revoke your grant and counter sue you for infringing that patent. Long legal battle ensues. Situation A: React is licensed under just BSD. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. T…

There's a school of thought that the BSD permission to "use" the software implies a patent grant. As an extension of this school of thought, React's PATENTS file could be seen at modifying that grant.

Re: Explaining React's license

#109

Post by kbenson »

cbuq wrote: post #64
eridius wrote: post #35

> 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. There's a pretty obvious solution to this: relicense React. The fact that Facebook isn't even considering that is a pretty strong indication that they "weaponized" their license on purpose. > To this point, though, we haven't done a good job of explaining the reasons behind our BSD +…

They need to stop referring to React as open source software. This is proprietary source code. > We believe that if this license were widely adopted, it could actually reduce meritless litigation for all adopters, and we want to work with others to explore this possibility. They do not give a pathway for litigation with merit. This is a patent weapon.

No company assumes a meritorious lawsuit against them exists. Planning for it is ridiculous. Don't take that as a defense of this type of license though.

Re: Explaining React's license

#110

Post by [deleted] »

devdoomari wrote: post #103
kevinflo wrote: post #101

I love love love love love react as a technology, but this is just awful. I believe any developer not on Facebook's payroll still contributing to React or React native at this point has a moral obligation to stop. I personally feel like such a fool for not taking all this seriously before the ASF gave me a wakeup call. React is a trojan horse into the open source community that Facebook purposely and maliciously stee…

+1 on this. I'm going for Preact ( https://github.com/developit/preact ) for React alternative.

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