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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#131

Post by incompatible »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #107
jaredklewis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 paten…

I read the possible revocation as applying to only the patent license, not to the BSD license which is in a separate file.

Re: Explaining React's license

#132

Post by kevinflo »

hajile wrote: post #117
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…

https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/0.11-stable/LICENSE Turns out that forking a somewhat recent version of React that uses Apache is possible while still retaining any relevant patents (esp pending vdom patents) and API compatibility.

https://github.com/kevinflo/react-open at least to play around with for my own purposes. I forget what the state of things even was back in .11

Re: Explaining React's license

#133

Post by web007 »

I don't understand ASF's position on this. How is FB-BSD+P different from CDDL 1.1, which includes section 6.2 regarding termination of patent rights in the event of a suit?

Re: Explaining React's license

#134

Post by hajile »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #126
hajile wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/0.11-stable/LICENSE Turns out that forking a somewhat recent version of React that uses Apache is possible while still retaining any relevant patents (esp pending vdom patents) and API compatibility.

0.11 is three years old, though. Not really recent.

Most of the APIs are the same which is what really counts. Other frameworks like Inferno already have way better performance using methods not tied to Facebook. But adding those to an actual React fork keeps the patent grant in a way that switching to a greenfield codebase might not.

Re: Explaining React's license

#135

Post by freewizard »

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…

Any suggestion on an open source & high quality alternatives for a large existing code base depending on React?

Re: Explaining React's license

#136

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.

[deleted]

Re: Explaining React's license

#137

Post by incompatible »

falcolas wrote: post #90
Lazare wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Facebook has a patent on React, it's almost certainly going to be on the vdom concept. If Facebook has a patent on the vdom, then all the projects in your list violate the patent, and none of them come with even a conditional patent grant from Facebook. If Facebook does not have a patent on the vdom or other React technology, then those other projects are safe, but so is React , since termination of the patent gra…

Being sued, whether the patent is valid or not, is really expensive. Unless you're Google, or of similar size, you're going to lose just due to the costs. Using React just opens you up to liability, with no real benefit (other than using React). Why would you use it?

Presumably anybody in this situation will be able to cope with the expense, since they'd already be suing Facebook.

Re: Explaining React's license

#138

Post by hajile »

kevinflo wrote: post #132
hajile wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/0.11-stable/LICENSE Turns out that forking a somewhat recent version of React that uses Apache is possible while still retaining any relevant patents (esp pending vdom patents) and API compatibility.

https://github.com/kevinflo/react-open at least to play around with for my own purposes. I forget what the state of things even was back in .11

You should probably steer clear of trademark infringement too. I was thinking something like free-dom myself.

Re: Explaining React's license

#139

Post by kbenson »

cbuq wrote: post #123
kbenson wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, in a perfect word, I could take Facebook's word that "We respect third party IP, including patents, and expect others to respect our IP too." I just can't unsee the way this theoretically could allow Facebook to partake in patent infringement without fear of retribution.

Yeah, pointing out how they would never plan for a meritorious lawsuit isn't really defending them, it's pointing out that the argument that they even might requires a lot of assumptions of good faith on Facebook's part that make no sense.

It's possible that there were two groups in FB that were for this, some that were naive enough to just not understand it, and some that totally understood it and let the others continue with their misconceptions. I don't believe there existed a group that actually understood it and it's ramifications and thought it was benign.

Re: Explaining React's license

#140

Post by hajile »

antoncohen wrote: post #129

Facebook's license is no more dangerous than regular MIT or BSD-style licenses. If you are OK with using MIT or BSD licensed software you should be OK with using Facebook's BSD + Patents software. Here is why: MIT and BSD licenses don't have any patent grants, unlike the Apache 2.0 license. If you use MIT/BSD open source software, and some functionality of that software is patented by the author, you could be sued fo…

They have implicit patent grants while Facebook's does not.

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence

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