My take on all this is Facebook's legal team seems to be sending a message to the open source community that they should come for the ideas, but wait for a truly open source alternative to come out before using those ideas in their own products.
GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
21–30 of 131 posts
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#22Serious question. React has been around for a while. Companies like Airbnb and Wix, for example, have been using React for a while. If Facebook were going to leverage this the way people are scared of, wouldn’t there be some example of them using it the way people are scared of? You know, on a company doing something it’s proven that they could make major money on? It’s not like this is a new provision, it’s been aro…
> So can’t this be boiled down to a conspiracy theory?
The license is real, anybody can read it, when you can guarantee or demonstrate that Facebook will never act on in, not today, not in 10 years, under any circumstances then you can call it a conspiracy theory.
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#23Specs are a bit weird to try to come up with the right licensing (It was a bit of a pain in the butt to try to get this right for webm, for example).
You want to encourage compliance with the spec, and protect people who implement the spec.
That is a different type of language that say, apache 2.
To be concrete: If you license the reference code as apache2, that would grant patent rights to people if they used reference code, and they'd be SOL otherwise. Licensing the spec as apache2 would do nothing, as it's not software.
So if you want something apache2 like, you have to use a grant that tries to talk about granting rights to implementations of the spec, and that, for example, terminates if people sue people for implementing the spec.
The first pass i took at this was in https://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/
(but i'm sure there are better approaches now)
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#24My take on all this is Facebook's legal team seems to be sending a message to the open source community that they should come for the ideas, but wait for a truly open source alternative to come out before using those ideas in their own products.
Or probably they are a mixture of old and new ideas and eventually things will streamline?
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#25Specs are a bit weird to try to come up with the right licensing (It was a bit of a pain in the butt to try to get this right for webm, for example). You want to encourage compliance with the spec, and protect people who implement the spec. That is a different type of language that say, apache 2. To be concrete: If you license the reference code as apache2, that would grant patent rights to people if they used refere…
Microsoft tries to do that with the Open Specifications Promise, a covenant not to sue: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecifications/dn646765
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
So React is damned for including a PATENTS license and GraphQL is damned for not including a PATENTS license? Facebook can't win for losing. Geez, wish they would just re-license under Apache 2.0.
> So React is damned for including a PATENTS license A patent grant is a good thing, you want a patent grant as a user of OSS. The problem people have with React's patent grant is the one sided terms of the patent grant (and the fear that Facebook could hold you hostage with those terms). > Geez, wish they would just re-license under Apache 2.0. This would be my preference. IMO, for the React issue, even if the issue…
Unfortunately that logic seems to lead to a strategy of FUD in the direction of a different patent license, which if that approach is validated then leads to being less open doesn't it?
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#27Oh boy I just love Facebook's kick away the ladder patents.
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#28Serious question. React has been around for a while. Companies like Airbnb and Wix, for example, have been using React for a while. If Facebook were going to leverage this the way people are scared of, wouldn’t there be some example of them using it the way people are scared of? You know, on a company doing something it’s proven that they could make major money on? It’s not like this is a new provision, it’s been aro…
> So can’t this be boiled down to a conspiracy theory? The license is real, anybody can read it, when you can guarantee or demonstrate that Facebook will never act on in, not today, not in 10 years, under any circumstances then you can call it a conspiracy theory.
Where is the GraphQL license? I don't see it in the repository:
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#29Help me on this: Facebook has just removed the PATENTS file from GraphQL repository, and now there are issues for this? And at the same time people are arguing over removing it from React?
This is madness…
Re: GraphQL Patent Infringement Issues
#30Why does Facebook not use something like an MIT license? I am honestly curious.
https://medium.com/@ji/the-react-license-for-founders-and-ct... TL;DR - In 2012, Yahoo sued Facebook over 10 patents, "general sentiment in the industry was that the lawsuit against Facebook was without merit; some said Yahoo was a patent troll." Facebook spent a lot of money acquiring a patent warchest to be used defensively against patent suits in the future. Yahoo then drops the patent infringement case. "The key…
You use React or GraphQL on any project at your company, and suddenly Facebook gets free reign to use ANY IP your company claims?
That's the definition of toxic.