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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#531

Post by fhrow4484 »

delinka wrote: post #397
fhrow4484 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok I see. But if you loose the license to any of those patents, you are infringing those patents by merely using React, aren't you?

I understand the followup question other people have now: What are those patents?

Re: Explaining React's license

#532

Post by fhrow4484 »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #13
bpicolo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without first re-writing the entire front-end to not use React Do note this isn't necessarily the case, because nobody has yet found a patent that covers React.

This is what I find confusing, the blog post mentions a patent license that you are granted, but as you say, nobody is aware of any patent covering React. React's doesn't seem to use any novel technique in the field of CS. But https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933... , the way I read it says they grant you a license to to "make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfe…

EDIT: "license under any Necessary Claims" seems to mean a license to the patents necessary for React as pointed out by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15052962

>> 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

#533

Post by shafyy »

Strom wrote: post #253
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 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've contributed to React before and will continue to do so. I haven't seen a single reason why not to. Just because React doesn't use your favorite license? Well this may shock you but I also use and help develop closed source software. In my view there is nothing morally wron…

Completely agree. Everyone here is acting as suing Facebook (and suing successfully) is something that will happen to all of them with great probability.

Why do you even care? It's a great framework and if you don't want to use it under the license then don't. But why ranting about they should change the license?

I can understand why FB is licensing the way they do. I also would be pissed off if I would get sued for some nonsense all the time and would take an opportunity to potentially reduce that.

Re: Explaining React's license

#534

Post by rictic »

etimberg wrote: post #425
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.

The downside of polymer is that it doesn't really play nicely with modern toolchains.

Expect good news on this front at the Polymer Summit on Tuesday.

Re: Explaining React's license

#535

Post by Spivak »

evgen wrote: post #464
throwaway13337 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know that they weren't granted separate licensing deals. I assume they were. This license is likely to protect facebook against patent litigation that a startup might claim facebook is in violation of. It's not too hard to imagine a scenario where the next snapchat-like-startup is using react native. Facebook is then in a super leveraged position against them legally. Snap stories are now facebook stories,…

A more likely explanation is that these large orgs employ real lawyers who looked at the licence and grant and who then approved the use of react because they are professional lawyers who actually understand the legalities involved, unlike 99% of the commenters in this thread.

What's not to understand? If Facebook infringes on one of your software patents your choices are to rewrite your existing React code and sue them for damages or ignore it.

Once your 'professional lawyer' agrees that the license is enforceable it's up to you to decide whether giving Facebook an effective grant of all your patents it worth it.

Re: Explaining React's license

#536

Post by Teknoman117 »

IanKelling wrote: post #317
Scaevolus wrote: post #220

Almost all of Facebook's "open source" code has the same PATENTS file, which makes them toxic if you can imagine a future where Facebook infringes one of your patents: https://github.com/search?p=5&q=org%3Afacebook+filename%3APA... This includes things far outside the React ecosystem: - Flow (JS type checker, like TypeScript) - prepack (JS optimizing transpiler) - a bunch of Android/iOS UI/debugging frameworks, - all…

> 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…

Just so I understand, as I've never really mulled on how software patents mix with open source licenses, when you say "you'd have a bsd license with no patent grant", who are you waiting to be sued by? Facebook and/or others? Could you theoretically release an open source project under something like BSD that infringes on a patent you hold and then sue someone for patent infringement that uses your project?

I suppose mainly what I'm asking is that by having this patents clause, is Facebook asserting that some or all contents of react are patented by Facebook? Would they be able to sue you for using react if you did something to get your patent grant revoked?

Re: Explaining React's license

#537

Post by kanishkdudeja »

My opinion on why this could now become a practical problem for people who still want to continue with React:

1) This will deter people and organizations from using such libraries. For example :- WordPress.com and many other companies have said that they will no longer use React.

2) Lower usage and application of such libraries means that lesser people will find bugs in them, lesser people will fork these libraries, lesser people will contribute to these libraries.

3) Facebook may itself lose interest in continuing to open source the library. Or add any new features to the open source version.

4) People may get stuck with bugs in such libraries and with no functionality being added to such libraries for years.

Re: Explaining React's license

#538

Post by boubiyeah »

gramstrong wrote: post #519
boubiyeah wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'd argue that google is pretty strong when it comes to frameworks, and that most of their criticism comes from people who aren't looking for a framework, but rather a library (like React). And Polymer isn't even really either of those things, it's a polyfill for a native browser feature.

No, a polyfill has to closely mirror an API. Polymer is inspired by web components but went its own way for several features.

Re: Explaining React's license

#539

Post by IanKelling »

DannyBee wrote: post #487
IanKelling wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Citation needed." Seriously? This is basic IP law 101. No license can be implied if there is an explicit license. I actually started gathering cite lists for you like I normally do, but instead, i'm not going to in this case. If you really want to argue this point, please go to google scholar and spend the 2 minutes it will take to pull up 100 cases on this. I don't feel it's fair to argue about a thing without taki…

Edit: afaik, implicit patent license for free software licenses are unproven in court. It's an interesting idea, and I actually hope it's the case that everyone is getting an implied patent license that will hold up in court. Thanks for the information, I wish I had incorporated it in my original comment.

Re: Explaining React's license

#540

Post by haeffin »

zeptomu wrote: post #373
rafinha wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffe and Caffe2 is also a good example!

What - Caffe2 is a Facebook project? I used the original Caffe and thought it was built by Berkely University - Caffe2 only shared the name I guess?

They hired the author.
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