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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#391

Post by emiliobumachar »

DannyBee wrote: post #170
carussell wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

"it's a world where no one is able to bring patent suits against anyone, because it means they are now violating the licenses of every piece of FOSS they're currently using." It's also a world where entrenched companies can feel free to use whatever technology they want from smaller competitors without fear of lawsuit, and use it to further entrench themselves :) I'd put a lot more money on that happening than "happy…

>It's also a world where entrenched companies can feel free to use whatever technology they want from smaller competitors without fear of lawsuit, and use it to further entrench themselves

I agree, but software patents are arguably bad enough that doing away with them entirely is worth the collateral.

A legislative solution might exist to have the best of both worlds, but, in the absence of that, suppose there's a copyleft-analogue hacky way to undermine software patents indiscriminately without requiring an Act of Congress. (and that's not a sure thing at all, but suppose.) Wouldn't you press the button?

Re: Explaining React's license

#392

Post by delinka »

kevinflo wrote: post #340
IanKelling wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"...definitely not the case." Citation needed, reasons required, etc. The patent license says nothing about terminating the BSD license. Neither refers to nor affects the other. Without a good legal argument, one must assume that the BSD license applies whether Facebook is being sued over a patent or not.

Re: Explaining React's license

#393

Post by boubiyeah »

Well it's a good thing there are plenty of alternatives. React is big but it only does the view well (and half of state management -.-') it's not too hard to replace in a stack.

I salute its main author, Facebook and instagram for inventing the virtual DOM concept; it's fucking genius and helped us make better apps, faster.

but absolutely no need to use react now.

Re: Explaining React's license

#394

Post by kenning »

jondubois wrote: post #385
stephen82 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I planned to learn more about React, but reading now this convinced me to learn Vue.js instead. It's under MIT license developed by a single person in addition to community's contribution. This link is rather interesting https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/comparison.html#React

Or there is Google's Polymer framework. In my opinion, Polymer is better than React and Vue. I could never bring myself to use React because of its liense terms.

Using polymer as a JS frontend framework wasted about a year of work at my friend's company. They eventually switched to react for one project and an in-house react replacement for the other.

Re: Explaining React's license

#395

Post by [deleted] »

imtringued wrote: post #289
Strom wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to sue with patents is not something I give much value to. Software patents aren't even valid where I live and operate. They concern me only as far as USA has the will to have a global jurisdiction. However if Facebook wants to sue me for something ridiculous and has the USA government's global help, then Apache 2.0 license isn't going to save me, they will find something else.

Yeah and that is exactly the problem with the license. You give up your right to sue facebook with ALL your patents while facebook only gives up the right to sue you with their REACT patent. We don't even know if there is such a thing as a "react patent".

[deleted]

Re: Explaining React's license

#397

Post by delinka »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #163
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…

> Now if you turn around and use the author for patent infringement for something else, you lose the patent grant that came with the software, and you are back to a normal plain old BSD license. > The BSD + Patents license is strictly better than the regular BSD/MIT licenses. You lose no rights, you may gain some patent protection. Could you provide a citation backing up your claims? if you read the patent grant for…

You left out the definition of "Necessary Claims":

> > A "Necessary Claim" is a claim of a patent owned by Facebook that is necessarily infringed by the Software standing alone.

Re: Explaining React's license

#398

Post by boubiyeah »

kenning wrote: post #394
jondubois wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or there is Google's Polymer framework. In my opinion, Polymer is better than React and Vue. I could never bring myself to use React because of its liense terms.

Using polymer as a JS frontend framework wasted about a year of work at my friend's company. They eventually switched to react for one project and an in-house react replacement for the other.

google is pretty bad at frontend frameworks from my experience :D Polymer is an experiment that should have stayed in that state.

Re: Explaining React's license

#399

Post by jgalt212 »

In practice, here's who will can be reasonably expect to be affected.

1. large tech cos. they always want to reserve the right to sue each other.

2. large advertisers. they need the ability to sue FB for any beefs they have over the ads they have purchased.

So if you're one of the two, I think your general counsel will say not to use react for any new projects.

Re: Explaining React's license

#400

Post by jnbiche »

Lazare wrote: post #188
reconbot wrote: post #185

Earlier 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…

Patents are public, and Facebook does not have a vdom patent. It's puzzling that this is even a question.
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