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On React and WordPress

ma.tt

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Re: On React and WordPress

#41

Post by thristian »

morgante wrote: post #17
hdra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Preact? It seems the react compatibility would be very helpful when they already have such a significant investment into react.

Personally, I have a hard time imagining that any Facebook patents you use with React wouldn't also apply to Preact. Then again, I think this whole patents issue is mostly FUD. The number of companies who have to reasonably consider suing Facebook for patent infringement is small and they know who they are.

My understanding is that you lose access to React if you sue Facebook over any patents at all, not just ones that may be relative to React.

Re: On React and WordPress

#42

Post by morgante »

ballenf wrote: post #39
morgante wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 somewh…

The patent clause isn't designed to give Facebook leverage. It's designed to grant patents unless you sue them. Even though patent trolls don't use React, Facebook wants to ensure that they don't grant patent licenses to patent trolls.

> 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.

If you can provide any direct evidence of that, I'd be fascinated. I highly suspect it's FUD.

Re: On React and WordPress

#43

Post by kemonocode »

electriclove wrote: post #25

I'm glad to see this post. People don't like the Facebook license for React and are willing to invest time and money to steer clear of it. I still don't understand why Facebook changed the RocksDB license so quickly but then took a hard stance on the React license.

Because React is far more weaponizable and less niche than RocksDB will ever be.

Re: On React and WordPress

#44

Post by [deleted] »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #26
maxyme wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it unclear if preact violates Facebook's patents?

The current understanding is that none of the patents in the portfolio currently covers React (and by extension, preact). But flipping the switch would satisfy the first-order requirement of not imposing the FB patent grant upon users of WP

[deleted]

Re: On React and WordPress

#45

Post by [deleted] »

ballenf wrote: post #39
morgante wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 somewh…

[deleted]

Re: On React and WordPress

#46

Post by zodiac »

hoodoof wrote: post #37
morgante wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

Well then, do you think they're wrong about it? If so why? How would you address the point about past litigation (e.g. by Yahoo)?

Re: On React and WordPress

#47

Post by zodiac »

batmansmk wrote: post #33

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.

There was an article about that recently - it wasn't proactively pushing an agenda so much as, if FB wanted to release any software as OS, without the grant, the lawyers would have had to review every commit to avoid violating someone else's patent.

Re: On React and WordPress

#48

Post by morgante »

thristian wrote: post #41
morgante wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I have a hard time imagining that any Facebook patents you use with React wouldn't also apply to Preact. Then again, I think this whole patents issue is mostly FUD. The number of companies who have to reasonably consider suing Facebook for patent infringement is small and they know who they are.

My understanding is that you lose access to React if you sue Facebook over any patents at all, not just ones that may be relative to React.

You lose the patent grant, which applies to all Facebook open source projects (not just React), so they can use all patents they own as part of a defensive portfolio.

If initiating a patent war with Facebook is a foreseeable business outcome for you, then you probably shouldn't use React. I remain convinced that logic applies to only a tiny minority of companies.

Re: On React and WordPress

#49

Post by kyriakos »

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 think preact since they already used react and will only delay them a few weeks preact seems like the more sensible option

Re: On React and WordPress

#50

Post by Viper007Bond »

firasd wrote: post #6
CharlesW wrote: post #4

> As our general counsel wrote, we made the decision that we'd never run into the patent issue. That is still true today as it was then, and overall, we’ve been really happy with React. Okay. > …I'm here to say that the Gutenberg team is going to take a step back and rewrite Gutenberg using a different library. Am I the only one missing the "why"? > …passing down to our users. Is that the "why"? If so, what does he m…

I think when Matt says "long-term consistency with core" he also means consistency with the philosophical aspects of free software. Note that the piece starts with Facebook's reaction to the Apache Foundation's stance against using React. If I understand correctly, the Calypso project was related to the administrative dashboard in their hosted WP offering (and other widgets that could be used in self-hosted WP.) Goin…

Gutenberg will be distributed with WordPress itself as the new post editor. This means the license(s) used with it will then apply to users of WordPress, who may or may not want to agree with React's license despite Automattic (WordPress.com) being comfortable with it via Calypso (WP.com's front end).
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