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I mean probably FB got patents.
and
Probably they have at least one that covers things React can do.
Almost every framework moved to components and virtual DOM.
So there is a big chance that any framework out there could infringe some of these React patents.
So their either can
revoke your React license when you sue them
or
Sue you over patent infringement if you don't use React
There was a time when React was Apache v2! https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/3bbed150ab58a07b0c4fa... shows that license. Has anyone seriously explored forking React from the last Apache v2 version?
I really like the idea behind this license. They want to see a world where software patents no longer exist. So they write a term into their licensing that makes it really difficult for people who do like software patents to use their stuff. I think I will move my projects over to a similar license. The only thing I would change would be to broaden it to invalidate if your company sued anybody over any patent. If eve…
This would only encourage fragmentation. Large companies have to resources to not use your software and create a competing product.
"But don't you want to know what technology we built it with?"
"No."
It's worth noting this "you can't sue us for violating your patents if you use our non-free open source software" is working as designed. Facebook claims that if every company adopted a React-like license, that software patents as we know it would basically die. It's worth noting that both Google and Facebook's patent lawyers are generally of the opinion that software patents are net bad, but differ in their opinions…
I really like the idea behind this license. They want to see a world where software patents no longer exist. So they write a term into their licensing that makes it really difficult for people who do like software patents to use their stuff. I think I will move my projects over to a similar license. The only thing I would change would be to broaden it to invalidate if your company sued anybody over any patent. If eve…
If you think patents shouldn't exist then why is the purpose of the license to protect a single company from patent lawsuits. Why isn't the license covering any patent lawsuits of any kind to any party like the ASL does? Why does the license only protect facebook? What if there are patents that apply to react that facebook doesn't own? Patent trolls can't sue facebook but they can still sue users of react and continue to use react.
>If everybody did that, maybe software patents would finally go away. No because facebook can still sue you for other software patents for internal software they didn't release.
Facebook's patent grant is a halfassed solution. They are either outright malicious and merely acting in self interest or blatantly incompetent. But since they are unwilling to change the license and patent grant I'm betting on the former.
Can someone please share what patents cover react? Because if they're revoking patents that don't cover react then there should be no problem to continue using react right?
The problem is if you ever found facebook infringing on one of your patents, you could not sue them -- your react patent grant would be rescinded. This is not a behavior of free software.
The only thing that happens when you sue FB over patents is that your patent grant covering React is gone, reducing your license to a regular BSD license. If you use Angular, vue or whatnot open source products covered by licenses without patents grants, there is NO guarantee whatsoever that this piece of software is free from patents of Google, FB, Oracle your favorite patent troll from around the corner. Yet people seem more fine with using software which comes without any patent grants whatsoever, and declare that hell would come over us if the FB patent grant on the software would be revoked.
Btw, clauses that revoke patent grants when you sue a party are pretty regular and present in the Apache License v2 and the (L)GPLv3, no one is crying about it and says that those licenses are not open source anymore. The GPLv3 goes even further and invalidates your right to use the software at all if you start sueing people who created that software.
Gosh, I am so happy to live in the EU where we do not have to deal with this kind of BS and can just use the best technology that solves the problem.
There was a time when React was Apache v2! https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/3bbed150ab58a07b0c4fa... shows that license. Has anyone seriously explored forking React from the last Apache v2 version?
AFAICT that version still had patents.txt no?
Can someone please share what patents cover react? Because if they're revoking patents that don't cover react then there should be no problem to continue using react right?
If I understand that license correctly, it is not 'patents that cover react', it is 'any facebook patent, present or future'. Also as explained in the article, it is also about my patents if I have any, in case facebook tries violating them. Far wider than 'react patents'.
- I use React for my startup's dashboard
- I sue facebook for violating my startup's patent without removing my react dashboard first
Now, what patents can facebook use to counter sue me that they couldn't sue me with anyway had I not used react?
He goes from this:
> The instant you sue Facebook, your patent rights for React — and any other Facebook ‘open source’ technology you happen to use) — are automatically revoked.
To this:
> If you use React, you cannot go against Facebook for any patent they hold. Full period.
"Full period", really? Because the first does not imply the second. This is now how patent law works.
Now, I'm not a lawyer either, but broad assertions like these should tell you that there's emotion at work here, not reason. In his fourth update, he made a list of companies that add something about patents to their open source licenses, implying that somehow that that proves something.
So the thing that people confuse here is patents and copyrights. The BSD license grants you the right to use works copyrighted by Facebook people and contributors. The patents clause, further, promises that should Facebook hold any patents that cover the OSS, they won't use them against you, unless you sue them first.
There is the whole idea floating around the internet that a BSD license somehow ensures that nobody will sue you for patent infringement. I really don't understand where this comes from. Hell, Android is Apache Licensed (which includes a patent grant) and still anyone who makes an Android phone has to pay license fees to all kinds of patent trolls (Microsoft most notably). These things are totally separate.
So first, if you sue Facebook for patents, you lose their patent grant (so they can sue you back, which everybody always does anyway - it's the only defense companies have in patent wars). But you don't lose the BSD license or anything. That's not how it works. All you lose is Facebook's promise not to sue you because you use React.
Secondly, and this is the core point, patents don't cover code, they cover ideas. Any patents that Facebook might have that, right or wrong, cover React, will surely be written broad enough that they also cover Preact, Inferno, Vue.js probably, and I bet also Angular. Not using React but one of these other libraries therefore makes no difference - in both cases, Facebook can use their React-ish patents to sue you.
To my understanding, patent lawsuits rarely get to the nitty gritty details of actual patents in reality. It does not matter whether a Facebook patent written broadly actually covers Vue.js or not - in practice, more often than not, companies will compare the height of the patent stacks they have, and agree on a settlement based on that.
All this patent grant says is that Facebook gets to use their patents that cover OSS to make their stack of paper a bit higher. Like they would if they hadn't made a patent grant at all.
So, repeat after me: using open source does not shield you from patent infringment lawsuits.