Earlier quoted context omitted.
An HN thread with a dozen responses? Hardly an exodus.
A quarter of all websites? An exodus.
Does the decision to use React or not affect end users? Each WordPress site is not making an independent determination.
Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
331–340 of 528 posts
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Implied patent licenses: https://www.wilmerhale.com/pages/publicationsandnewsdetail.a... https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html Basically, if you sell or license a product that requires a patent to work, courts have generally held that you grant an implied patent license for any patents that the product might require. If you explicitly reference patents within the license, however, then whatever t…
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…
> and if you try to sue them for violating that patent, you're completely f*cked.
No, if you try to sue them for violating that patent, they can try to sue you for using React - if they actually have valid patents that cover React, that is. I doubt IBM's lawyers are breaking a sweat.
Why do you keep spreading FUD about this stuff even after Facebook withdraws the license?
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too work for a Fortune 150 company and we've gone all in on React.
I'm told that one reason companies might have chosen to avoid React was that they could have imagined themselves be in competition with Facebook at some point, and thereby in the danger zone with their old BSD licence.
They explicitly said in their FAQ that you could use React even in direct competition. None of this matters now, of course, because it's been relicensed. The only impact the patents license ever had on anyone was iff they initiated a patent lawsuit against Facebook.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#334So 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 pr…
Are you a lawyer? If not, you would be doing a disservice to anyone curious about the topic.
My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can somebody who speaks legalese translate Red Hat's Patent Promise into more parseable English? I'm curious how it works, but the wording is pretty obscure to me.
The way I'm reading it, if you develop free/open source software that infringes Red Hat's patents, Red Hat promises not to sue unless you sue them first. The "combined" part seems to be saying you can also develop a system that's partly proprietary, as long as the proprietary parts are simple and not using Red Hat's patents. If they sell a patent, the buyer must agree to the same promise. The promise won't protect yo…
> promises not to sue unless you sue them first
Isn't that exactly the same as Facebook's license grant?
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#336So... I guess I still don't understand what was wrong with BSD+Patents. I get that there's legal uncertainty: I can imagine some companies, especially larger ones, not wanting to give up their patent-suit option just because one random small team in their org is using React. And barriers to adoption aren't a great idea when one of your goals is wide adoption. Overall, though, I think making it much harder to file pat…
I think the story is this: 1. Software patents are a huge, huge, existential crisis facing our industry. 2. So huge, in fact, that nobody wants to deal with it. We can't realistically figure out if the libraries we are using are covered by patents, and given how broken issuance is, they probably are. 3. So the only practical solution is to use MIT licensed libraries, pretend there's no patent issue, and put our heads…
This. I don't even want to know how many patents we're all infringing on in everything we ship. We all just sort of sweep this under the rug. No one ever does a technical/patent analysis. Is patent check part of your deployment pipeline? I highly doubt it. There's probably tens of thousands of broadly worded software patents out in the wild. The only thing that keeps the industry safe is how difficult it actually is to do that analysis because of the inherent complexity in both software and patent law.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#337So... I guess I still don't understand what was wrong with BSD+Patents. I get that there's legal uncertainty: I can imagine some companies, especially larger ones, not wanting to give up their patent-suit option just because one random small team in their org is using React. And barriers to adoption aren't a great idea when one of your goals is wide adoption. Overall, though, I think making it much harder to file pat…
The current state of things is that patents are stockpiled as deterrents, kind of like nuclear weapons. All of the big companies know that if they sued one another over some patent claim, the other side would retaliate, and it would be a big mess with no real winners. Facebook's patent clause disarms all their opponents, but leaves them free to attack. It's actually a wildly aggressive, offensive weapon, surprisingly…
No, they said your license didn't terminate if you had a counterclaim against them. The only event that license terminated was if YOU attacked Facebook.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#338So 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…
Caffe2 machine learning https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS
We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days. Early draft at https://github.com/Yangqing/caffe2/tree/apache pending double check to make sure we are honoring all existing contributors.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#339So... I guess I still don't understand what was wrong with BSD+Patents. I get that there's legal uncertainty: I can imagine some companies, especially larger ones, not wanting to give up their patent-suit option just because one random small team in their org is using React. And barriers to adoption aren't a great idea when one of your goals is wide adoption. Overall, though, I think making it much harder to file pat…
I think the story is this: 1. Software patents are a huge, huge, existential crisis facing our industry. 2. So huge, in fact, that nobody wants to deal with it. We can't realistically figure out if the libraries we are using are covered by patents, and given how broken issuance is, they probably are. 3. So the only practical solution is to use MIT licensed libraries, pretend there's no patent issue, and put our heads…
"and the more you think about patents the more you wish you were a plumber and not a dev so all you'd have to deal with is toilets blocked with shit, and not software patents, which are much worse."
This.
Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
#340IANAL, 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…
Why would Facebook sue for copyright infringement? Suing them for patent infringement doesn't invalidate the copyright - not for BSD+PATENTS, and certainly not for MIT. Your scenario doesn't make sense.
What exactly doesn’t make sense? What in the theoretical scenario do you not understand?
Here is the scenario without the … emotional baggage:
——
Company X has patent P.
Company X releases open source O which provides implementation of patent P.
There is no patent grant in the license of open source O.
Company Y uses open source O.
——
Can company X sue company Y for infringement of patent P? I think the answer to this is “yes”.