Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

code.facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 528 posts

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

#171

Post by stupidcar »

nostrademons wrote: post #98
JamesFM wrote: post #63

Wait, 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?

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…

Has this implied patent license ever actually been tested in court wrt to open source software?

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

#172

Post by davidgerard »

ng12 wrote: post #167
CydeWeys wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. There was an exodus brewing. For starters: https://ma.tt/2017/09/on-react-and-wordpress/ https://hacks.hyperspacer.com/app/items/15256532

An HN thread with a dozen responses? Hardly an exodus.

A quarter of all websites? An exodus.

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

#174

Post by eridius »

guelo wrote: post #155
spenczar5 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it backwards. The facebook patent license puts all the power in their hands, and none in yours: they can still sue you for violating their patents, but you can't sue them . It would be a much, much worse patent regime.

If BSD+patent was widely adopted it could disarm all sides equally.

No, it only puts power in the hands of the big players. It might mean the big players can't sue each other, but they can absolutely sue the smaller companies. BSD + Patents only "disarms" anyone who's actually using the licensed software, and perhaps more importantly, depending on it to the extent that they can't reasonably move away if they lose the patent grant. Even if Facebook did start using OSS from some small company, they could probably just rewrite the software themselves if they want to sue the company.

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

#175

Post by KGIII »

CydeWeys wrote: post #134
joshmanders wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything from the Apache foundation to Wordpress. Those were the only two.

WordPress accounts for something like 19% of all websites, more so than any other single platform. Do not underestimate the importance of their decision.

A bit higher, according to those who monitor these sorts of things.

Some 28.7% of sites use Wordpress.* Curiously, I've seen the 19% number being cited as 19% of all new websites use Wordpress. I'm not sure how 19% becomes 28.7%, but it may just be that sites using WP stick around longer.

* https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/al...

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

#176

Post by carussell »

discordianfish wrote: post #61

Can someone explain why this is good news? As I understood it, the former license was as permissive but additionally to that included a patent grant?

It's a response to placate folks who pick a stance based on the memes that the newstides wash up. In other words, it's not exactly good news at all, it's just a really big deal.

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

#177

Post by nemothekid »

guelo wrote: post #143
kelnos wrote: post #71

So... 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…

Unethical developers that work at shitty companies with shitty lawyers were annoyed that they couldn't use React. That's all there is to it. I loved BSD+patent as one of the few potentially successful attacks on the awful software patents regime that we currently live under. This defeat means we are probably stuck with it for the rest of our careers.

>Unethical fevelopers that work at shitty companies with shitty lawyers were annoyed that they couldn't use React. That's all there is to it.

Apache is an unethical foundation with shitty lawyers? I admire the goal of eradicating software patents, to me BSD+Patents was an unsuccessful way to do it. It hurt OSS projects more than it hurt private projects.

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

#178

Post by zanny »

guelo wrote: post #155
spenczar5 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it backwards. The facebook patent license puts all the power in their hands, and none in yours: they can still sue you for violating their patents, but you can't sue them . It would be a much, much worse patent regime.

If BSD+patent was widely adopted it could disarm all sides equally.

It already exists and is called the Apache license. If you want to disarm patent trolls but don't want to compel the preservation of user freedoms on other distributors of your software license it ALv2.

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

#180

Post by eridius »

ngrilly wrote: post #165

Why replace BSD + patent grant with MIT, instead of keeping BSD alone without a patent grant?

My guess is so that way when people talk about "BSD-licensed Facebook software" there won't be any confusion as to whether it's BSD or BSD + Patents.
Post reply on HN