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Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

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Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#271

Post by protomyth »

dsacco wrote: post #219
damosneeze wrote: post #37

Thank you, Wordpress.[1] [1] https://ma.tt/2017/09/on-react-and-wordpress/

Sorry, I'm confused, can you help me understand that blog post? I'm getting three messages from it: 1. We like React a lot with or without the license. 2. It's not our job to convince the world React's patent license is fine. 3. We're substantially moving away from React, including large rewrites. ...why are they moving away from React? I'm confused, do they believe using React implicitly supports it? They're already…

> Does React's BSD + Patents license extend downstream like that?

Yes, why would it not?

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#272

Post by rmccue »

bigbassroller wrote: post #264
samirillian wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I am a bit curious about why WordPress would need React in the first place. It's not like they're building a real-time app. Am I missing something here?

Wordpress has a pretty good JSON api that you can use with crud operations: https://wordpress.org/plugins/rest-api/ There's also already a theme that uses React: https://themes.redradar.net/foxhound/ With those two things you could build a pretty good web app. The only thing is you'd be in WordPress land and isn't glamorous.

> Wordpress has a pretty good JSON api that you can use with crud operations: https://wordpress.org/plugins/rest-api/

FYI: this shipped in WordPress 4.7 as part of the core software, and is now available on every WordPress site. (e.g. https://www.wired.com/wp-json/)

> The only thing is you'd be in WordPress land and isn't glamorous.

We tried to shield REST API users from much of the nastiness of WordPress' backwards compatibility (inconsistent field naming, date weirdness, etc), but yeah, it's still not perfect.

(I'm the co-lead on the REST API focus, happy to answer any Qs!)

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#273

Post by LeoNatan25 »

abiox wrote: post #242
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #151

IANAL, but here's an ominous scenario: There is no patent clause now. Assuming some FB patent has crept its way in one of their open source, if a company sues FB for patent infringement, FB would be able to counter-sue for copyright infringement due to the suing company's use of FB's open source. "As long as you don't sue us, we won't sue you" kind of a deal. If the above scenario is true, it seems there is no de fac…

> FB would be able to counter-sue for copyright infringement due to the suing company's use of FB's open source the whole point of mit/bsd/etc is copyright grant. fb can only realistically win a suit wrt infringement if they revoke the mit/bsd license first (not sure if this is possible...not sure if it's even been tried before).

Revoking a license retroactively is not possible.

But since there is no patent grant with the MIT license, using the open source software is–potentially–open to patent litigation. I don’t think this has been tested in court yet.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#274

Post by jedwards1211 »

samirillian wrote: post #249
damosneeze wrote: post #37

Thank you, Wordpress.[1] [1] https://ma.tt/2017/09/on-react-and-wordpress/

Though I am a bit curious about why WordPress would need React in the first place. It's not like they're building a real-time app. Am I missing something here?

Yes, that React is really convenient for building practically any type of web app, not just real-time apps, and they probably want the slick and seamless user experience they can get by building a progressive web app in React.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#275

Post by arca_vorago »

cies wrote: post #140

So which FB project still have a BSD+patents license. I count: * ReasonML - https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/PATENTS.txt * GraphQL - https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS * react-native - https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/PATENTS * PlanOut - https://github.com/facebook/planout/blob/master/PATENTS * Flow - https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/PATENTS * Haxl…

I've been trying to tell everyone licensing is more important than they realize, but there are so many people who fundamentally misunderstand licensing and therefor just don't care (dwtfyw license for example), or have falsely been trained by subpar instructors at uni and $othertraining about how bsd/mit is the superior license for business because $reasons.

The four freedoms and free software solve so many of the problems I see around modern tech-infrastructure. No, free software doesn't solve every issue and has some of it's own, for example I think at the code complexity levels we are at the many eyes theory is starting to crumble, but it doesn't change the core truisms about freedom in computing that are important for us to move forward in a free and open society if we actually want to start solving prolems.

Now that we have a concrete example of how picking tooling with bad licensing can bite people in the butt, please take this time to at least consider GPL varients (A/L/GPLv3) for as much of your tooling as you possibly can. (perhaps CC0/CCBY/CCBYSA for content)

In my opinion, MIT/BSD licenses like FB moved to in this case simply aren't good enough to be future-proof, primarily because of the ability of future tivoization of a product that removes freedom from the user (think BSD on playstation).

Remember, either the user controls the program, or the program controls the user.

If the GPL scares you for some reason or you have question about it (commercial sales of gpl software for example), feel free to ask. I've spent enough time wading through just about every license so I think I might be able to cut through some fud.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#276

Post by sangnoir »

tzs wrote: post #261
tytso wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, suppose you're some company like, say, IBM which figured out some way to say, safely double the energy density and recharge cycles of Lithium Ion batteries, which you have patented. Let's also assume that you are shipping some critical problem which is dependent on React. Facebook could now freely use your patented idea, and violating it left, right, and center, and if you try to sue them for violating t…

> Facebook could now freely use your patented idea, and violating it left, right, and center, and if you try to sue them for violating that patent, you're completely f cked. Maybe, maybe not. You suing them over your patent would terminate you patent* license from Facebook, but not your copyright license. Whether that fucks you or not depends on whether or not you actually NEED a patent license from Facebook. As far…

> As far as I know, no one has actually found a Facebook patent that covers React

This would make Reacts PATENTS file a bluff (nothing to grant or revoke). I don't think many companies would be eager to base decisions on that legal theory.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#277

Post by wrs »

carussell wrote: post #158
ploxiln wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's licensed MIT, the Engineers just say "it's MIT license like half of the libraries we already use" and it's a legal non-issue. If the license is not one of the standard ones already in use, and it mentions patents, suddenly legal gets involved and it's a disaster. They're very risk-adverse and no one's really sure what will happen when it gets to court. It doesn't have to make sense - after all, most software…

This is the first time I've seen "put your head in the sand" as an actual recommendation, instead of being characterized as something not to do. And as far as recommendations go, it's more than a little bit nutty.

Not at all. Willful infringement is grounds for triple damages. So "never, ever, ever look at patents unless an attorney asks you to" was the company policy at Microsoft and Apple when I was there, and at several other major tech companies whose policies I happen to have heard of. If you were to mention to a company attorney that you've looked at another entity's patent, there would be a loud screeching noise from the attorney and you'd be scheduled for an immediate refresher course on patent policy.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#278

Post by djur »

abiox wrote: post #235
tacon wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Legal matters at big companies generally take months to resolve and come to consensus over. Sure, at your typical big public company. But Facebook voting control is firmly in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, and he doesn't have to wait for approval of a board of directors. Just like when he decided to buy Instagram for $1 billion in a matter of days. If Mark detected developer sentiment shifting, he can move just as fa…

> If Mark detected developer sentiment shifting, he can move just as fast as he wants to stanch the bleeding. how is react's popularity at all material to facebook's interests? at best it means you get more outside contributions, but you already have plenty of talent internally.

Having popular, high-profile open source projects helps Facebook attract more and better talent in three primary ways:

First, it increases the likelihood that the average programmer already is familiar with the tools they'd use at Facebook. It's useful for them to be able to hire people who already know React, Reason, etc. On occasion, they'll manage to find highly talented developers who either contribute to their projects or build useful related projects, and then they can make those people an offer. Even better, sometimes that's an entire startup they can acquihire.

Second, it increases the prestige of a job at Facebook. Most of the core public functionality of Facebook isn't particularly interesting to me, for example, but the stuff they're doing with OCaml is. The chance of me working there is still essentially nil but it's definitely less nil than it would be if I didn't know about projects like that.

Third, it gives them something really valuable to offer skilled devs -- the ability to become widely known and respected for your contributions to a popular open source project. That's worth a great deal to some people.

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