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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#141
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/kevinflo/react-open at least to play around with for my own purposes. I forget what the state of things even was back in .11

You should probably steer clear of trademark infringement too. I was thinking something like free-dom myself.

Good point. Just switched it to rdom-open (first thing that popped in my head lol)

Re: Explaining React's license

#142
post #55

> Their decision was not a legal decision about the compatibility of projects with this license. As has always been the case, source code licensed under the Facebook BSD + Patents license can be combined with source code licensed under other open source licenses like BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0, and GPL. What complete, tone deaf newspeak. If a BSD-licensed project uses code with a Facebook BSD license, the project is now Fa…

The way I read it, ASF denied FB's BSD+Patents license in a mysterious bureaucratic decision that will cause a lot of pain for companies that use React, while FB's decision to create the BSD+Patents license was an altruistic move designed to benefit the software ecosystem and reduce their patent litigation overhead. I believe FB is at the "pounding on the table" stage.

The ASF does not want downstream users to be caught by more restrictions than those of the ALv2. The BSD+Patents licensing imposes more restrictions; thus, Apache projects cannot depend upon software under that license.

This is pretty clear, and the ASF has been operating under this "no more restrictive than the Apache license" since its origin.

Re: Explaining React's license

#143

Facebook's license is no more dangerous than regular MIT or BSD-style licenses. If you are OK with using MIT or BSD licensed software you should be OK with using Facebook's BSD + Patents software. Here is why: MIT and BSD licenses don't have any patent grants, unlike the Apache 2.0 license. If you use MIT/BSD open source software, and some functionality of that software is patented by the author, you could be sued fo…

[deleted]

Re: Explaining React's license

#144
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company assumes a meritorious lawsuit against them exists. Planning for it is ridiculous. Don't take that as a defense of this type of license though.

I agree, in a perfect word, I could take Facebook's word that "We respect third party IP, including patents, and expect others to respect our IP too." I just can't unsee the way this theoretically could allow Facebook to partake in patent infringement without fear of retribution.

I don’t get the obsession with React. It’s a great concept but vdom isn’t hard. Many great alternatives preact, inferno. Slightly different ones like snabdom. We use virtual-jade which allows us to build templates in jade as clean functions.

Facebook has gone too far with React and its Trojan patent clause. So easy to get away from it though with smaller, faster and more focused libraries.

Re: Explaining React's license

#145

Facebook's license is no more dangerous than regular MIT or BSD-style licenses. If you are OK with using MIT or BSD licensed software you should be OK with using Facebook's BSD + Patents software. Here is why: MIT and BSD licenses don't have any patent grants, unlike the Apache 2.0 license. If you use MIT/BSD open source software, and some functionality of that software is patented by the author, you could be sued fo…

I don't do any webdev, so I have no horse in this race, but I find it plausible that some developers would be more worried about Facebook infringing their patents than the respective organizations that develop Ruby, Rails, and FreeBSD.

Re: Explaining React's license

#146
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how Facebook would feel if all the open source software they currently use incorporated the same license That would work incredibly well to neutralize patents, actually, and would be a huge win for free/open source software. It's surprising not to have seen anyone point out the logical conclusion of a world where every major license includes a React-like stance on patents: it's a world where no one is able to bring…

> and would be a huge win for free/open source software It would be a huge win for companies with large software patent portfolios, which is the opposite of what the free software movement is about.

> It would be a huge win for companies with large software patent portfolios

This is backwards. Those are exactly the companies that would be harmed, because their hopes to be able to wield those patents offensively have been nixed.

Re: Explaining React's license

#147
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would patiently beg everyone to employ some basic reasoning. Situation A: React is licensed under BSD + PATENTS. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. Turns out Facebook has a patent for something in react. They revoke your grant and counter sue you for infringing that patent. Long legal battle ensues. Situation A: React is licensed under just BSD. You sue Facebook for infringing your widget patent. T…

There's a school of thought that the BSD permission to "use" the software implies a patent grant. As an extension of this school of thought, React's PATENTS file could be seen at modifying that grant.

Right. This is the notion that BSD provides an "implicit" patent grant. Legal scholars are debating it, and there is no court precedent. ... but it is likely a more permissive grant than the explicit grant provided by BSD+PATENTS.

Re: Explaining React's license

#148
post #52

The Facebook patents license, https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS , says: > The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion: ... (ii) against any party if such Patent Assertion arises in whole or in part fro…

If Snapchat used React, Facebook would kill them to death because Snapchat couldn’t do much. They already mass copied snapchat’s Features.

Any sane aspiring developer would know not to give Facebook that much power.

Re: Explaining React's license

#149

Facebook's license is no more dangerous than regular MIT or BSD-style licenses. If you are OK with using MIT or BSD licensed software you should be OK with using Facebook's BSD + Patents software. Here is why: MIT and BSD licenses don't have any patent grants, unlike the Apache 2.0 license. If you use MIT/BSD open source software, and some functionality of that software is patented by the author, you could be sued fo…

I've read it, and I'm pretty sure it says that if you initiate a patent lawsuit against Facebook, you lose the license to use React at all. It doesn't revert to BSD. (EDIT: Apparently that's wrong although the license could certainly be more clear about it.)

If React doesn't implement any of their patents, the patent clause offers nothing extra. If it does, it would be damned nice to know which one(s). Do other libraries (other virtual DOMs, perhaps) infringe?

Re: Explaining React's license

#150
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the fact that if you sue Facebook for any patent infringement, even a legitimate one (say, you're the creator of some new hardware), Facebook will revoke your React license. Also, Facebook has no vdom patent. It's not like you can be granted a secret, hidden patent (even the word "patent" itself means "open").

> Facebook will revoke your React license. you mean their patent grant? How can an open source license like apache, MIT or bsd be "revoked"? Do facebook have a public blacklist of people who aren't allowed to use react?

Correct. Once released under an OSS license, that cannot be revoked. They can change/restrict the license on future releases, but you can also choose an older release, which uses the more favorable OSS license.
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