> we still believe our BSD + Patents license provides some benefits to users of our projects
Is there somewhere where anyone has elaborated a case as to what those benefits to users would actually be?
Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
101–110 of 528 posts
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#102Wait, this doesn’t solve anything. They replaced BSD with MIT, which are basically the same license and then they removed any explicit patent grant. So this means the user is actually granted less rights then before. Am I missing something or does this make zero sense?
That's what all the Facebook & React folks were arguing. Facebook doesn't want to do unconditional patent grants. Plus, they decided that the weak patent retaliation clause in Apache 2 license wasn't strong enough. This new license is strictly riskier for people than the old license, but it's more familiar, so people won't freak out.
Apache 2 was fine for RocksDB.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Facebook may very well end up in the majority's good graces with this move. Really? They are doing the minimum possible to prevent an exodus from their stack after a public outcry.
React is pretty popular already. FB only really needs to change the license to keep the growth.
Exactly.
React would have been fine, but to say the big players jumping ship didn't matter is just wrong.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#104The world won't end for Facebook because it doesn't have this clause.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the list of packages they're truly open sourcing is intentionally small, then. They're only truly open sourcing the ones that are very popular and that had a huge amount of outcry over the license. That makes it worse.
> That makes it worse. In what way does re-licensing their most popular packages make it worse? It says they're evaluating. Doesn't say no and as demonstrated here it doesn't mean they wont change their mind later.
You didn't interpret my comment correctly. What is worse is that the narrowly selected range of projects to re-license is intentional rather than unintentional. They're only fixing the patent clauses on the bare minimum that they feel is necessary due to outrage. That means that they'd rather not but they're being forced into it. It'd be different if they were deciding to re-license everything; that might indicate an actual change of heart.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#106Facebook almost ruined these awesome projects just because of some nut head not thinking through. Hopefully this will recover them on many fronts in opensource community. I don't know if they were just playing with our emotions or something but I personally feel happy to hear the news.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#107Wait, this doesn’t solve anything. They replaced BSD with MIT, which are basically the same license and then they removed any explicit patent grant. So this means the user is actually granted less rights then before. Am I missing something or does this make zero sense?
If there is an implicit patent grant, we have more rights. I think there is a strong case that the implicit grant exists, and would vastly prefer seeing projects licensed under MIT than under the Facebook license.
Apache 2.0 would have also been acceptable, as it had a better explicit patent grant. I'm actually a little surprised they didn't choose it.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#108Fortunately, Facebook's C++ utility library, folly, has been Apache 2.0 since at least 2012 and never had the BSD+patent license put upon it.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#109Wait, this doesn’t solve anything. They replaced BSD with MIT, which are basically the same license and then they removed any explicit patent grant. So this means the user is actually granted less rights then before. Am I missing something or does this make zero sense?
I'm not well versed enough in the various licenses to compare BSD+Patents and MIT, but in my opinion, this is more of a move to appease the community than anything dealing with the benefits/disadvantages of the license being used.
You may be right that this might actually reduce our rights, however, the MIT license is well known and accepted by many in the developer community. It's been around long enough that developers know what they are agreeing to when they use something with an MIT license. With the BSD+Patents license, the biggest concern was not understanding what you were getting into when using React.
Facebook recognized this and conceded despite still believing in the BSD+Patents license to be better. So in that sense, this makes a lot of sense as it:
* alleviates community concerns
* builds up their standing with developers
* generates a lot of good PR
* draws attention away from alternative solutions which were getting a lot of publicity from all of this (Vue.js, Marko, Preact, etc.)
It would be nice though to have a lawyer chime in on the differences between BSD+Patents and MIT.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#110Does any one know if this means react native is moving as well?
Cause I might consider a move now.