Fine. That you still don't address my main concern (i.e. that the premise of the article is clickbait and your entire argument about open source purity is orthogonal to it) tells me everything I needed to know.
> Patent grants are good.
So you're not upset with Facebook providing a patent grant but with the terms of that patent grant, fair enough.
> Facebook could’ve done the same
The projects using this patent grant are almost 100% sponsored by Facebook. They're not tied to any particular ecosystem or using Facebook services. If Facebook makes the use of the relevant patents contingent on you not suing them, I'm having a hard time feeling upset about it.
Yes, this isn't as permissive as Apache2 but "you get to use all my stuff as long as you don't sue me for stealing your ideas" sounds fairly benign.
> If it were true, companies should be running towards this license model.
This is literally an argument from popularity. Despite all appearances, IT can be mindnumbingly slow to adopt new ideas, especially ones involving politics. Most people don't care about patents -- heck, as can be seen from 90% of the people commenting on React's patent grant, most people don't understand patents.
In the JS ecosystem MIT and BSD are among the most popular licenses. The reason they're popular is that they're short and don't contain much legalese. Does that make them good licenses? Hell no, but it makes them appear easy to understand and simple. Adding a patent grant to that makes it "not simple". It's also something you have to do intentionally.
But that's beside the point. Let's just assume Facebook is wrong and having this be the standard wouldn't bring about world peace and the death of patents or what have you. Let's go with that. How does your assessment that this is evil and bad follow from that?
> Well, yes. They are conjecture.
Thank you. Then stop wrapping them as quality advice to trick people into reading your opinion.
> Please stop making camps in your head. There is no React vs. ASF conspiracy nor battle taking place.
You tried to dismiss my opinion by portraying me as a React fanboy. I pointed out why that is bullshit and you're throwing bricks in a glass house. Now you're accusing me of being the one who tries to make this about camps?
> Startups don’t tend to enjoy that amount of manpower; I have already answered this several times.
Your entire point is that startups shouldn't use React because bigcos might acquire them. Now you're literally arguing that bigcos don't have to worry about migrating away from React. Doesn't that seem entirely contradictory?
Sure, you could argue that bigcos will still factor in this cost into acquisitions but if they already pay that cost for their own projects it can't be so prohibitive to result in bad deals. And how do you rationalise Microsoft actively encouraging outside developers to use React to build on their platform? Surely this would make any resulting acquisition unnecessarily costly.
> Hence, what is left? Trust that FB won’t go after you?
Are you worried Facebook will go after you? Are you worried Google will go after you? Are you worried Apple will go after you? Software patents are already a minefield. You're far more likely to be sued by a non-operating entity.
A patent lawsuit can easily kill almost any startup. You seem to be obsessing over how many nukes you're going to be hit with while operating at a scale where being caught in the blast radius of even a single one would end you.
Oh, wait, this is completely irrelevant. The patent grant does not terminate when you get sued. It doesn't even terminate if you countersue. The patent grant ONLY terminates if you proactively sue Facebook or sue (or countersue) any user of React over React (including Facebook). If Facebook sues you and you countersue Facebook over your smart fridge patent, you still get to use React.
> but my time is finite
So is mine. But protecting people from unsubstantiated FUD is worth it.
> you will find that OSS developers who are affiliated to some Foundation (Mozilla, Apache, Eclipse, etc.) tend to be versed in licensing, without needing to be lawyers
Good, as every developer should be. But if your mischaracterization of how the patent grant can terminate isn't based on a lack of comprehension or absentmindedness, what am I to read into that?
PS: I meant what I said. You should have written an article entirely about the issues you have with the BSD+Patents issue from an aspect of open source purity. Without the conjecture and clickbait angle to it. I would have read that, too. I would probably have disagreed with some of it even if I would have upvoted it. But at least it would have provided the grounds for an honest discussion.
The argument is valid to be had. There's no point to dressing it up as if it were about startups.
You're not an idiot. You know very well that your article won't convince startup developers to drop React, it will only influence non-technical people who are risk-averse and see your headline without understanding any of it.
Instead of playing this game and claiming you "don't want to start a flame war" after writing an obviously inflammatory article, please salvage those ideas you buried in it and write that article properly.