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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#331

Post by IanKelling »

Scaevolus wrote: post #325
IanKelling wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am frustrated with software with trivially incompatible licenses. It's not a copyright license, and it's not incompatible with any other free software license. I'm frustrated with the misinformation spread about it. If this patent license/grant get's revoked, you are back to simply using the BSD license with no patent grant. I've read so many people say "you'd have to stop using react if you sued facebook", uh, n…

A patent grant is a license. The patent license is indeed independent of the copyright license, but it's troubling enough that multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it. I'm doubtful that any licensing scheme can significantly drive patent reform. Lobbying and legal precedents hold that capability.

> multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it.

Citation needed on Google. Apache isn't "not wanting to be entangled", they reject EVERY license which gives stronger protections for user freedoms than apache license alone, like the gpl, lgpl, cddl, mpl, etc, etc, etc. Google has no problem using the gpl for linux and lots of licenses and projects that apache would reject, so you can't just lump them together like it's the same thing.

Re: Explaining React's license

#332

Post by swellsy »

erokar wrote: post #309
drieddust wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come? Angular is Typescipt first so typing guarantees are builin.

Not in templates.

You need to use the Angular Language Service extension for vs code, it works perfectly giving you full type completion and error checking in templates https://github.com/angular/vscode-ng-language-service

Re: Explaining React's license

#333

Post by ranit »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #215
thesagan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't like the direction the big players are taking the internet It's more like developers in large parts stopped caring for standards and looked after products and "big players" and "the next big thing" instead aka the consumerization of IT. Happened to SQL, browsers, middleware, network protocols, app servers, containers, programming and markup languages, and more. Nowadays, big things come onto the scene and i…

> It's more like developers in large parts stopped caring for standards and looked after products and "big players"

This is not a recent phenomenon. For example, developers using (mostly) Microsoft tools on Windows have been doing it for decades already.

Re: Explaining React's license

#334

Post by scarlac »

JoshMnem wrote: post #223

I'm not sure if React (and the other projects that contain the PATENTS file) will survive the backlash to this in the long run. Vue.js is rapidly climbing in popularity, and Elm is probably going to go mainstream in 2018. There are alternatives like Mithril and Ember too.

The only way I see people stop using React is if there's an example of a company being counter-sued by Facebook as a result of the license or something like that.

Re: Explaining React's license

#336

Post by IanKelling »

DannyBee wrote: post #174
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…

"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 for patent infringement. " Every single lawyer i've ever spoken to strongly believes implied licenses will protect you very well here. Like, among us open source lawyers, it's pretty much the one thing people ag…

> Once their is an explicit grant, any implicit grant you would have gotten is extinguished.

Citation needed. And if you aren't planning to sue over software patents, then the author is clearly correct that this is strictly better than BSD/MIT alone.

Re: Explaining React's license

#337

Post by Lazare »

imtringued wrote: post #280
Lazare wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

React is still unsafe because facebook can infringe on your patents and if you sue you will lose your rights to use react.

That's simply false. It cannot happen. How many times does this need to be explained?

It's been discussed a ton, the plain language of the license makes that clear, Facebook even covered this in their official React license FAQ (https://code.facebook.com/pages/850928938376556).

Please stop spreading FUD.

Re: Explaining React's license

#338

Post by sanxiyn »

IanKelling wrote: post #331
Scaevolus wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patent grant is a license. The patent license is indeed independent of the copyright license, but it's troubling enough that multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it. I'm doubtful that any licensing scheme can significantly drive patent reform. Lobbying and legal precedents hold that capability.

> multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it. Citation needed on Google. Apache isn't "not wanting to be entangled", they reject EVERY license which gives stronger protections for user freedoms than apache license alone, like the gpl, lgpl, cddl, mpl, etc, etc, etc. Google has no problem using the gpl for linux and lots of licenses and projects that apache would rejec…

DannyBee is on this thread. That is good enough citation for me.

Re: Explaining React's license

#339

Post by Bahamut »

zackbrown wrote: post #208
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 remember sitting in the front row at ngEurope (Angular conf) back in 2014, when Misko announced that Angular 2 would be a (breaking) API rewrite vs Angular 1. At that time, Angular was perhaps at its global maximum of community mind share—bigger than React!—and its popularity began to sink afterwards in large part due to that PR snafu. I wonder if this is React's "Angular 2." What's worse, the misstep this time is…

Coming from the Angular community & still connected quite a bit to it despite currently working primarily with React, I don’t think having an incremental change would have helped Angular compared to React due to the complexity of Angular.js’s API & its flaws. I actually stand by quite strongly behind the decision to rewrite in Angular 2, but Angular 2 took a long time to come into being - it was rewritten 3+ times in getting to its current state & 3-4 years in the making. I think Google devoted the proper resources too late into it in its quest to make the most performant & flexible framework. I believe this gap is what largely hurt Angular, and while the PR snafu was visible, I think the current situation would have been arrived at regardless.

Re: Explaining React's license

#340

Post by kevinflo »

IanKelling wrote: post #316
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…

> if a project's license is radioactive It's not a copyright license. It's a patent grant/license which is completely independent. This matters for several reasons, including when just saying "license", this usually means a copyright license. If this patent grant get's revoked, you are back to simply using the BSD license with no patent grant. I've read so many people say "you'd have to stop using react if you sued f…

I've seen it pointed out before though that it would fall back to just the BSD license and others countered saying that was definitely not the case. It seems to be yet another fundamental thing about this that isn't clear or agreed upon at all. Still, your point is important and I hope people read it and consider it.

Also by "license" I meant the "BSD + Patents license" as the Facebook writeup put it.

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