Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Startups should not use React

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 176 posts

Re: Startups should not use React

#61

Post by matt4077 »

npad wrote: post #50

What happened to the "software patents are ridiculous and should never be granted" argument? Now it seems that the same sort of people advancing the anti-patent argument are angry about FB's licence. This seems like pretty muddled thinking.

It seems like the times have changed in that regard. If you hung around on slashdot in the 2000s, it was commonly accepted that software patents are bad, and that the GPL was more good than bad.

Now, it appears there are many people thinking they will at some point get filthy rich with their patents. And I've frequently seen the GPL being derided as some sort of communist plot.

It's good to see that at least the large companies are still on the side of openness, although I fear what will happen when today's commentators become tomorrow's CEOs. Imagine something like the nodejs ecosystem, except now you'll have to buy a $1000/year subscription to the "node modules starter edition".

Re: Startups should not use React

#62

Post by chippy »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #39

Does this mean I should primarily use services from startups that use React, so that they won't get acquired and the service shut down?

Also keep monitoring them for when they unviel their latest UI change for usability improvements which sublty removes React for some other framework. This change would be the canary in the mine and would probably be accompanied by changes in terms of use / privacy policy with some subtle word changes. One could almost imagine this monitoring being automated... if it could be backed up with data!

Re: Startups should not use React

#63

Post by danmaz74 »

thomyorkie wrote: post #7

> If all giants agreed to open source under the “BSD + patents” scheme, cross-adoption would grind to a halt. Why? If Google released Project X under “BSD + Patents”, and Amazon really liked it, rather than adopting it and losing their right to ever sue Google for patents, they would go off and build it on their own. This seems like a reasonable argument, but it doesn't seem to have deterred several big name companie…

Amazon is the poster child of idiotic software patents, see 1-click buying. If this makes their software development more expensive, I'll be really glad.

Re: Startups should not use React

#64

Post by traek »

chaostheory wrote: post #32
thomyorkie wrote: post #7

> If all giants agreed to open source under the “BSD + patents” scheme, cross-adoption would grind to a halt. Why? If Google released Project X under “BSD + Patents”, and Amazon really liked it, rather than adopting it and losing their right to ever sue Google for patents, they would go off and build it on their own. This seems like a reasonable argument, but it doesn't seem to have deterred several big name companie…

Developers are not lawyers, and developers and lawyers don't talk to each other all the time. I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to check the license, given how fast they have to move? I've been guilty of that as well in the past.

> I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to check the license, given how fast they have to move?

Airbnb, Netflix, and Dropbox? I guarantee you all of those companies have lawyers that reviewed the license.

Re: Startups should not use React

#65

Post by danmaz74 »

beojan wrote: post #60
hdra wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understood, It is not a patent on React. As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented... and that is not the discussion over the past few days has been about. This whole shebang has nothing to do with React itself, or the "technology" that React uses or anything, but more about the way many FB's open source libraries are licensed, one of which is React. The license specify that you are free to use…

> The license specify that you are free to use React as you would use a BSD licensed software, provided that you never sue FB for a patent. Only if something in React is patented. As I read it, only the patent license is revoked if you sue Facebook, so if nothing in React is patented then the patent license is superfluous anyway and you should have nothing to worry about. The issue with the Apache license seems to be…

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

This seems to support your point. But it's pretty obscure legalese.

Re: Startups should not use React

#66

Post by danmaz74 »

hdra wrote: post #49
chrisco255 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they published React under Apache v2 at one point in time, how can they later re-release under a new license and claim patent rights on it then? Since, assuming whatever patents they own covered this version of React as well...wouldn't that be considered prior art?

From what I understood, It is not a patent on React. As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented... and that is not the discussion over the past few days has been about. This whole shebang has nothing to do with React itself, or the "technology" that React uses or anything, but more about the way many FB's open source libraries are licensed, one of which is React. The license specify that you are free to use…

As others have noted, you CAN sue Facebook if they infringe any of your patents, but then they could counter-sue you for any patents Facebook could have on React.

In other words: if you don't sue us, you don't need to care if we have a patent that covers some React mechanism. If you want to sue us, you should first check if we have any React-related patents we could use against you.

Re: Startups should not use React

#67

Post by danmaz74 »

cbhl wrote: post #9

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…

This seems to be the case: the wording is pretty obscure and IANAL, but the risk if you use React and sue Facebook for patent infringement should only be that they can counter-sue you for any patents they may hold that apply to React.

And be careful: if Facebook has any patents related to React, they could very well cover also the React alternatives: I seriously doubt that eg the author of Vue.js researched if they were violating and FB React-related patents.

Edit: here the link to the patent grant https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS

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

This should mean that the patent grant only covers you from being sued for any patents covering React technology, and that is the only protection you lose if you sue Facebook.

Re: Startups should not use React

#68

Post by [deleted] »

hdra wrote: post #49
chrisco255 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they published React under Apache v2 at one point in time, how can they later re-release under a new license and claim patent rights on it then? Since, assuming whatever patents they own covered this version of React as well...wouldn't that be considered prior art?

From what I understood, It is not a patent on React. As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented... and that is not the discussion over the past few days has been about. This whole shebang has nothing to do with React itself, or the "technology" that React uses or anything, but more about the way many FB's open source libraries are licensed, one of which is React. The license specify that you are free to use…

[deleted]

Re: Startups should not use React

#69

Post by matthewmacleod »

FUD, FUD, FUD. Pure FUD.

There are, AFAIK, no known patents on React. This means you can go ahead and sue Facebook for patent violations to your heart's content. The license they granted to you to use any of their patents applied to React (of which there are none) is terminated, and you can merrily continue using React.

If this is incorrect, and Facebook actually do hold patents on React, then all of the popular alternatives almost certainly infringe on them as well. So, the worst-case scenario is no different.

Re: Startups should not use React

#70

Post by raulk »

cbhl wrote: post #9

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…

If Facebook's approach is so great, by introducing a legal provision in the OSS license, how come it has not been adopted by any other company except for Palantir, despite being introduced in 2014?

I analysed 75+ OSS projects from 35 companies, and Facebook is practically alone.

https://medium.com/@raulk/list-of-companies-and-popular-proj...

Post reply on HN