What advice would you say to someone who just who's only about 6 months in ( learning React ) ?
A. Its not been that long.. walk away and learn something else.
B. If you've put in the time try to get something out of it.
C. I don't know what the whole fuss is about your not going to be building anything worth facebook's time anyway.
Explaining React's license
231–240 of 622 posts
Re: Explaining React's license
#232[deleted]
Re: Explaining React's license
#233So, i feel for them, having watched Google's open source projects be targeted by patent trolls in the past. But i really don't think this is the way forward. A few things: 1. If you want to suggest you are doing this as part of an attempt to avoid meritless litigation, you really should give concrete examples of that happening. Otherwise, it comes off as a smoke screen. 2. The assertion is that if widely adopted, it…
That's a good point, especially since the concrete examples won't possibly be about patent trolls. Why would patent trolls (aka Non practicing entities) care about loosing rights "to make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer the [React] Software". (as defined in https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933... )?
Look at Oracle v. Google...that was a mess. Samsung v. Apple...also a mess. Not all patent litigation is from trolls alone.
Re: Explaining React's license
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how Facebook would feel if all the open source software they currently use incorporated the same license That would work incredibly well to neutralize patents, actually, and would be a huge win for free/open source software. It's surprising not to have seen anyone point out the logical conclusion of a world where every major license includes a React-like stance on patents: it's a world where no one is able to bring…
So this opinion almost swayed me, but the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. If you use project A that was written by one or two developers in their spare time (and they included a BSD+patents) clause, would Facebook fear being sued by them? Probably not -- but new companies that get anywhere close to what Facebook does (increasingly, that's everything these days) definitely li…
> the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them.
They should be. Many popular open source projects are supported by a 'community' of large companies, or are invested into a widely respected foundation like Apache.
Additionally, many projects that started off as simply a few developers, grow to the point that a company is founded to handle support and customization. An example of this would be Redis Labs---started by the originator of Redis.
If even tiny patent trolls can be 'dangerous' to multinationals, I expect most would steer clear of declaring a patent war on the community at large.
What if Postgres had a retaliatory patent clause?
What if Linux did?
Re: Explaining React's license
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
We learned from Java and Google that you can't patent and API. It's not forked from React it's an alternative.
The risk behind Preact isn't the API . Remember, this is a discussion about patents , so what matters is fundamental concepts and algorithms. The most likely thing for Facebook to patent is the concept of a virtual DOM that's diffed to apply updates to the real DOM. IF they have such a patent (and apparently they don't), then any library that has a vdom implementation infringes, including Preact. Of course, if they D…
I'm pretty sure that the concept (or implementation) of virtual dom wasn't invented as a part of React. IANAL but I don't think they could patent it. Ignoring specific optimizations, a virtual dom algorithm is fairly simple.
Re: Explaining React's license
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 on this. I'm going for Preact ( https://github.com/developit/preact ) for React alternative.
Could anyone with experience porting from one to the other let us know how it went?
For many codebases, Preact can be use simple as:
npm i -S preact preact-compat
{
"resolve": {
"alias": {
"react": "preact-compat",
"react-dom": "preact-compat"
}
}
}
Re: Explaining React's license
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how Facebook would feel if all the open source software they currently use incorporated the same license That would work incredibly well to neutralize patents, actually, and would be a huge win for free/open source software. It's surprising not to have seen anyone point out the logical conclusion of a world where every major license includes a React-like stance on patents: it's a world where no one is able to bring…
This is sadly false. This would only neutralize patents of actual companies that have something to create. The only ones left to hold patents would be patent trolls. This would just massively empower patent trolls, and harm everyone. Because patent trolls don’t have to license patents there’s no risk for them.
Patent trolls never had any risk to themselves in the first place. I don't see how this empowers them.
It just leaves them as clearly the only enemy left, with massive corporate lobbies against them, and widespread public distaste weighing them down.
The current situation is mixed---companies aren't fully in favour of patents, but support the status quo.
Re: Explaining React's license
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how Facebook would feel if all the open source software they currently use incorporated the same license That would work incredibly well to neutralize patents, actually, and would be a huge win for free/open source software. It's surprising not to have seen anyone point out the logical conclusion of a world where every major license includes a React-like stance on patents: it's a world where no one is able to bring…
So this opinion almost swayed me, but the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. If you use project A that was written by one or two developers in their spare time (and they included a BSD+patents) clause, would Facebook fear being sued by them? Probably not -- but new companies that get anywhere close to what Facebook does (increasingly, that's everything these days) definitely li…
The clause states you only lose the patent rights if YOU sue Facebook for patent infringement (and only for patent infringement, not other reasons).
As pointed out by Dennis Walsh in (https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok...), it would take millions to bring a patent suit against Facebook.
Re: Explaining React's license
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how Facebook would feel if all the open source software they currently use incorporated the same license That would work incredibly well to neutralize patents, actually, and would be a huge win for free/open source software. It's surprising not to have seen anyone point out the logical conclusion of a world where every major license includes a React-like stance on patents: it's a world where no one is able to bring…
So this opinion almost swayed me, but the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. If you use project A that was written by one or two developers in their spare time (and they included a BSD+patents) clause, would Facebook fear being sued by them? Probably not -- but new companies that get anywhere close to what Facebook does (increasingly, that's everything these days) definitely li…
[deleted]
Re: Explaining React's license
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This would only neutralize patents of actual companies that have something to create. Against each other only, right? They could still use their patents against patent trolls.
Yes, but which patent troll actually uses anything that you can prove violates their patents? They’re basically immune.
I mean, look at Samsung v Apple and Oracle v Google...it's not all trolls in the litigation game.