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On React and WordPress

ma.tt

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Re: On React and WordPress

#31

Post by CharlesMerriam2 »

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

Many trumpet the problems with patent infringement cases, particularly in the odd calculations of "damages one would have avoided if the infringement potential were known". Few trumpet the real cases of fear, uncertainty, or doubt killing business opportunities. Acquisitions are called off when the IP review finds GPL in a product, or your proprietary networking technology losing its patent protection to Amazon (because someone signed up for AWS for a month, years ago).

I believe WordPress made the correct leap not to embrace a "license taint" that would smell bad to cautious users.

Re: On React and WordPress

#32

Post by eblanshey »

I'm willing to bet $100 they will switch to Vue. It's similar to react (which they want), arguably easier to learn, and the WordPress community comes from a php background, which has already embraced Vue. This is a big plus for plugin developers.

Re: On React and WordPress

#33

Post by batmansmk »

Why does the Facebook license try to push an agenda with a perpendicular concern to the open sourcing of Reactjs? Was the purpose of opensourcing Reactjs a way to not get sued? They lost credibility in my eyes on their intention.

Re: On React and WordPress

#34

Post by sheeshkebab »

CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #31

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Many trumpet the problems with patent infringement cases, particularly in the odd calculations of "damages one would have avoided if the infringement potential were known". Few trumpet the real cases of fear, uncertainty, or doubt killing business opportunities. Acquisitions are called off when the IP review finds GPL in a product, or your proprietary networking technology losing its patent…

AWS dropped that patent clause a couple of months ago, apparently (https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-drops-cont...)

Re: On React and WordPress

#35

Post by hoodoof »

Lawyers. They sure are spoiling the success for the React folks. You can bet Facebook has alot of them and you can bet their political influence is strong with the upper management.

Lawyer: "this thing, this point in the contract, it's VERY VERY important". The more lawyers you get in the room, the more beard pulling, wailing and hand wringing there would be about the dire, dire consequences of taking this stupid clause out. And of course the world would come to an end if no-one listened to lawyers.

After I fucked several business deals listening to lawyers say how contracts should be changed, I decided to make my own decisions about what matters and what doesn't in a contract.

The real problem for ReactJS is that someone at facebook is listening to the lawyers wring their hands about some possible future that will never happen. facebook should just grow up and tell its lawyers to shut up and go back to doing.... whetever it is they do.

Re: On React and WordPress

#36

Post by morgante »

hoodoof wrote: post #35

Lawyers. They sure are spoiling the success for the React folks. You can bet Facebook has alot of them and you can bet their political influence is strong with the upper management. Lawyer: "this thing, this point in the contract, it's VERY VERY important". The more lawyers you get in the room, the more beard pulling, wailing and hand wringing there would be about the dire, dire consequences of taking this stupid cla…

> some possible future that will never happen

Facebook has been subject to numerous patent litigations and is very likely to be involved in future patent litigations. Maintaining a defensive patent portfolio is an important part of preparing for such litigations, so Facebook's lawyers certainly aren't idly protecting their patents.

Re: On React and WordPress

#37

Post by hoodoof »

morgante wrote: post #36
hoodoof wrote: post #35

Lawyers. They sure are spoiling the success for the React folks. You can bet Facebook has alot of them and you can bet their political influence is strong with the upper management. Lawyer: "this thing, this point in the contract, it's VERY VERY important". The more lawyers you get in the room, the more beard pulling, wailing and hand wringing there would be about the dire, dire consequences of taking this stupid cla…

> some possible future that will never happen Facebook has been subject to numerous patent litigations and is very likely to be involved in future patent litigations. Maintaining a defensive patent portfolio is an important part of preparing for such litigations, so Facebook's lawyers certainly aren't idly protecting their patents.

Yep, exactly what the fb lawyers are saying.

These are the sorts of important sounding things that the lawyers are saying and frightening everyone into thinking just how incredibly important this issue is, how much is at stake.

Re: On React and WordPress

#38

Post by yawaramin »

mox1 wrote: post #30
cvsh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt is a copyleft zealot. Of course he'd drop React over this non-controversy. Anyone paying attention to how he views GPL would come to that conclusion.

Did you read the blog post? His main concern is suddenly updating ~25% of all websites to "include" the React license. Imagine Microsoft running a small WordPress site off in the distance somewhere that takes the Wordpress + React update. Tadaa, MS is now in theory bound by the FB patent clause. He doesn't want to be responsible for the potential legal liability of encumbering 25% of the internet with a new license a…

Microsoft is already using React in public-facing stuff.

Re: On React and WordPress

#39

Post by ballenf »

morgante wrote: post #36
hoodoof wrote: post #35

Lawyers. They sure are spoiling the success for the React folks. You can bet Facebook has alot of them and you can bet their political influence is strong with the upper management. Lawyer: "this thing, this point in the contract, it's VERY VERY important". The more lawyers you get in the room, the more beard pulling, wailing and hand wringing there would be about the dire, dire consequences of taking this stupid cla…

> some possible future that will never happen Facebook has been subject to numerous patent litigations and is very likely to be involved in future patent litigations. Maintaining a defensive patent portfolio is an important part of preparing for such litigations, so Facebook's lawyers certainly aren't idly protecting their patents.

But that's irrelevant here. FB is likely getting sued by patent holding companies who aren't reliant on or using React. So the patent clause doesn't really get FB anything against patent trolls.

It does get them leverage against legitimate patent holders. There have been reports of companies having to pay in some roundabout unspecified way royalties to FB for React as part of a large patent licensing deal.

I'm somewhat skeptical of these reports, but if there is direct revenue to FB from this clause it would be the Occam's Razor explanation for their intransigence.

Re: On React and WordPress

#40

Post by kendallpark »

ryanswapp wrote: post #3
ljoshua wrote: post #2

It's too bad that this particular point has become an issue with so many good open source projects. I still think that the risk, even for startups considering acquisition exits, is low (see this great post from a patent/IP attorney [1]), but the fact that it's enough to cause players like the ASF and WordPress to move away from it just means fewer players and less innovation in the ecosystem. IANAL, but I wish the la…

I agree that the risk of running into legal trouble with Facebook is pretty low for many companies. However, that doesn't make it feel any less dirty. It would be nice if the lawyers at Facebook would take a chill pill on this one but that will never happen. It will be interesting to see where OSS projects from Facebook go moving forward given that the noise surrounding their patent clause seems to get louder and lou…

> I'll bet WordPress get's rewritten in Vue.js

I had the same thought. If that's the case, it will be a big boost for Vue.

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