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

On React and WordPress

ma.tt

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 212 posts

Re: On React and WordPress

#141

Post by Flenser »

notacoward wrote: post #122
bodegajed wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> baseless and meritless Are you expert in patent law for you to come up with that conclusion though? I you're not a lawyer then your assumption that it's a perfectly OK patent grant is baseless and meritless as well.

> I you're not a lawyer then your assumption that it's a perfectly OK patent grant is baseless and meritless as well. ...as would any non-lawyer's claim otherwise. Do you call them out the same way, or are you selective about where you apply that rule? In actual fact, it only takes a tiny bit of familiarity with patent law to see that a revocable grant can't be worse than no grant at all. Many engineers have such fam…

"a revocable grant can't be worse than no grant at all"

an implied license that can't be terminated is better than a explicit license that can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15051717

Re: On React and WordPress

#142

Post by whipoodle »

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.

What exactly is the agenda they are alleged to be pushing?

Re: On React and WordPress

#143

Post by Flenser »

fiatjaf wrote: post #133
TheCoreh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Facebook has patents covering React, these probably also cover Preact, so you'd actually be in a worse position: Potentially violating patents and not having any sort of grand.

How? Isn't Preact totally different? How can Facebook patent other people's code like that?

You can patent the idea or algorithm that the code implements, so long as the code isn't old enough to be considered "prior art".

Re: On React and WordPress

#144

Post by j_m_b »

jasonsync wrote: post #129

I'm here to say that the Gutenberg team is going to take a step back and rewrite Gutenberg using a different library. It will likely delay Gutenberg at least a few weeks, and may push the release into next year. Just a few weeks? Is it that trivial to swap out a library?

Yah I LOL'd out that one. A year from now we'll be reading the postmortem of the problems the Gutenberg team has faced swapping out React for another library and how things still aren't quite what they used to be.

Re: On React and WordPress

#145

Post by danielharrison »

jasonsync wrote: post #129

I'm here to say that the Gutenberg team is going to take a step back and rewrite Gutenberg using a different library. It will likely delay Gutenberg at least a few weeks, and may push the release into next year. Just a few weeks? Is it that trivial to swap out a library?

Depends on how it's written. I'd suspect they've done a pretty good job on eeping the engine as decoupled from their code as possible. It'd probably be just a matter of rewriting a translation layer.

Re: On React and WordPress

#146

Post by chrisco255 »

Flenser wrote: post #138
notacoward wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that it applies to situations where doubt is NOT unreasonable. It doesn't, but it does apply to this situation because the fear etc. is unreasonable. Utterly. Either you have an explicit patent license or the entire PATENTS file becomes inoperative and you have exactly what you would have had with a plain BSD license. It's simple logic. Authority after authority, including Automattic's own counsel, has…

Except that the implicit licence couldn't be terminated if you sued Facebook: https://i.imgur.com/geUPyXl.png

Nobody knows if there is an implicit patent license or not for MIT / BSD Code. It's never been tested in court.

Re: On React and WordPress

#147

Post by fiatjaf »

Flenser wrote: post #143
fiatjaf wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Isn't Preact totally different? How can Facebook patent other people's code like that?

You can patent the idea or algorithm that the code implements, so long as the code isn't old enough to be considered "prior art".

So all other frameworks that use the concept of virtual dom are also owned by React?

Re: On React and WordPress

#148

Post by notacoward »

Flenser wrote: post #141
notacoward wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I you're not a lawyer then your assumption that it's a perfectly OK patent grant is baseless and meritless as well. ...as would any non-lawyer's claim otherwise. Do you call them out the same way, or are you selective about where you apply that rule? In actual fact, it only takes a tiny bit of familiarity with patent law to see that a revocable grant can't be worse than no grant at all. Many engineers have such fam…

"a revocable grant can't be worse than no grant at all" an implied license that can't be terminated is better than a explicit license that can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15051717

I think DannyBee is simply wrong that the explicit grant extinguishes the implicit one, and I've seen plenty of real lawyers agree. The copyright license and the patent license (LICENSE and PATENTS respectively) are separate contracts and even address separate areas of law. The legal principle involved here is that the permissions granted under LICENSE may not be unilaterally withdrawn except for reasons specified in that document itself. That's why some contracts have specific clauses saying that they may be modified by subsequent contracts, because otherwise they may not. LICENSE lacks such a clause. Therefore, in the event of the copyright holder bringing any kind of lawsuit (not just patent) that interferes with others' exercise of permissions given under LICENSE, they would become liable (for breach of contract). It's really not so much an implicit patent license as a guarantee that enforcing patents would lead to mutually assured destruction.

The key point here is: all of that still applies regardless of what other contracts exist between the two parties - including the explicit patent grant. The PATENTS file can not modify or nullify anything except itself, either by its existence or by its subsequent revocation. No court would say that it does, because the implications for contract law in general go far beyond patent and copyright.

Disclaimer: IANAL. I'm just a guy who understands logic, and who has been involved with software patents from an engineer's perspective.

Re: On React and WordPress

#149

Post by notacoward »

Flenser wrote: post #138
notacoward wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that it applies to situations where doubt is NOT unreasonable. It doesn't, but it does apply to this situation because the fear etc. is unreasonable. Utterly. Either you have an explicit patent license or the entire PATENTS file becomes inoperative and you have exactly what you would have had with a plain BSD license. It's simple logic. Authority after authority, including Automattic's own counsel, has…

Except that the implicit licence couldn't be terminated if you sued Facebook: https://i.imgur.com/geUPyXl.png

> the implicit licence couldn't be terminated

"Couldn't?" I think you just said the opposite of what you meant, and ended up being correct. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15257004 where I lay out the actual logic involved.

Re: On React and WordPress

#150

Post by Flenser »

chrisco255 wrote: post #146
Flenser wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the implicit licence couldn't be terminated if you sued Facebook: https://i.imgur.com/geUPyXl.png

Nobody knows if there is an implicit patent license or not for MIT / BSD Code. It's never been tested in court.

"never been tested in court" doesn't mean you can't have an opinion on whether it would hold up in court: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15051717

(e.g. many parts of the GPL have never been tested in court.)

Post reply on HN