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Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

issues.apache.org

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Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#181

Post by vbernat »

Reading a bit more the thread, it's quite surprising. The assignee is Chris Mattmann. From his webpage, he is not a legal counsel. The only evidence of a problem they show is that BSD alone implies a patent grant but coupled with an explicit patent grant, this is not the case anymore. The other evidence is brought by Roy Fielding who does not appear to be a legal counsel either about a discussion (oral?) with Facebook's legal counsel that the license is incompatible with ASLv2.

The whole decision seems to have been taken by "not-a-lawyer" people with their own interpretations. Doesn't the Apache Foundation have some software lawyers they can ask?

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#182

Post by captainmuon »

discordianfish wrote: post #174
captainmuon wrote: post #151

I think this is an overreaction (pun accidental). There are two things here: The copyright license, and the patent grant. Copyright applies to the concrete implementation. You have to agree to the license to be subject to it, and to legally use the code. A potential patent applies to any implementation. Even if you write a clean-room clone of React, if it uses the same patent, Facebook has a patent claim. But that me…

That's how I understand the patent grant too. Are people here really confusing a grant with some sort of restricting of their freedom or do we miss something? I frankly don't want to believe everyone, including apache foundation, believes this without getting their facts straight..?

I think there is a legal layer, and an ideological layer. From the legal layer, this is a non-issue. You are not in any way worse off than if the license was public domain or BSD (as far as I understand it).

From an ideological or appearances point of view, it seems a bit clumsy. People see it as a submarine to get access to their patents, rather than an insurance to prevent unnecessary patent litigation costs.

I wonder what other companies do with their patent grants, e.g. Microsoft. I remember MS had one that said, you may use our patent for the Ribbon UI, as long as you follow our UI guidelines and don't make an Office competitor (which I find pretty restrictive). But maybe there are other options out there that people would find more agreeable.

I think a unilateral patent grant for React in the license would be nice, but unrealistic. Maybe they should restrict the kinds of patent actions that trigger the invalidation of the grant, say only to certain patents, but it is hard to find a good compromise.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#183

Post by LeoNatan25 »

BorisEm wrote: post #163
nojvek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vscode does not use react specifically for the licensing reason. I don’t know if they do now but when I was at MS this was the case. I know many teams at MS who evaluated react and lawyers strictly advised to stay away from it. I hear things have changed a bit, but you’ll never see Office and Windows use it.

Office uses react already: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-ui-fabric-react

That’s not “Office uses React”, it’s a “collection of robust components designed to make it quick and simple for you to create web experiences using the Office Design Language.”

Do you really see no difference between the two?

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#184

Post by cyphar »

captainmuon wrote: post #155
neilparikh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it sane to lose the patent grant if you are a aggressor in a patent lawsuit against Facebook (for any patent, even ones unrelated to React)? The clause also doesn't explicitly cover software patents only, so if Facebook infringes on your hardware patents (which is plausible, since Facebook does hardware related work as well), you still can't sue them.

I think the spirit is that patents are not legitimate. Suing for patent infringement is not considered exercising a legal right, it's considered being a dick and vandalizing someones property. So this is not to be read like a contract between to businesses, but like a truce. It might as well say "we agree to not destroy your business using dirty tricks if you don't attempt the same". Of course, opinions on that are d…

That's how Apache 2.0 and GPLv3 treat patents. The language in the React license is not symmetric like the above licenses and thus doesn't feel like it's a "screw you" to patents. Not to mention that Facebook is very patent-heavy and it doesn't feel like they're anti-patent in any meaningful way.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#185

Post by cyphar »

discordianfish wrote: post #174
captainmuon wrote: post #151

I think this is an overreaction (pun accidental). There are two things here: The copyright license, and the patent grant. Copyright applies to the concrete implementation. You have to agree to the license to be subject to it, and to legally use the code. A potential patent applies to any implementation. Even if you write a clean-room clone of React, if it uses the same patent, Facebook has a patent claim. But that me…

That's how I understand the patent grant too. Are people here really confusing a grant with some sort of restricting of their freedom or do we miss something? I frankly don't want to believe everyone, including apache foundation, believes this without getting their facts straight..?

The problem is that unlike the Apache 2.0 or GPLv3 patent grants, the React license restricts you from suing Facebook for _any_ patent (even non-software patents).

And note that that Facebook doesn't reciprocate that, and so if they decide to sue you for any alleged patent infringement then you cannot counter-sue for patent infringement they may be committing if you are using React. Also it makes you far weaker in negotiations about patent portfolios.

I personally dislike this whole patent business, but I can imagine even pro-patent people would also be against this.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#186

Post by chrisco255 »

fencepost wrote: post #146

I was interested in React based on what I'd read and was figuring it'd be worth looking into, but this provides all the reason I need to avoid it - I don't forsee a situation where I would personally or as a small company be suing Facebook, but I could see developing something then selling/trying to sell it to a larger company. If my code comes with a big side of "oh, and if you buy this you won't be able to sue Face…

If Microsoft's lawyers were okay with React, then I'm pretty sure your startup is okay. https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#188

Post by chrisco255 »

BorisEm wrote: post #163
nojvek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vscode does not use react specifically for the licensing reason. I don’t know if they do now but when I was at MS this was the case. I know many teams at MS who evaluated react and lawyers strictly advised to stay away from it. I hear things have changed a bit, but you’ll never see Office and Windows use it.

Office uses react already: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-ui-fabric-react

http://www.reactnative.tools/ React Native at Microsoft

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#189

Post by captainmuon »

neilparikh wrote: post #95
ori_b wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it sane to lose the patent grant if you are a aggressor in a patent lawsuit against Facebook (for any patent, even ones unrelated to React)? Why should Facebook support companies that are suing them?

Because they already allowed other people to use it, and it doesn't required extra effort on Facebook's part to allow another company to use it. I can understand why Facebook would want to have a clause like this (to discourage lawsuits against them), but I would consider it against the spirit of open source to do so (ie. Facebook should be able to continue to do this, but I wouldn't consider React to be open source…

I wonder, does the definition of "open source" or "free software" require any patent grant at all?

I guess the GPLv3 has provisions for patents, but older licenses didn't. I remember some controversy around open source video codecs that you were not able to use safely because they were infringing patents.

Re: Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license

#190

Post by viraptor »

mixedbit wrote: post #166
captainmuon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there was no patent grant, and just the BSD license? Then you have no patent protection in the first place! You are in the same situation as when the patent grant expired because you sued them. I don't see how this is any better. You do not give them a license to use any patent. You are right that in practice the non-enforcement means that they can willy-nilly use your patents. But if we are arguing about fac…

My understanding is that if a company open sources a patent protected code (with one of the standard open source licenses without any additional patent clauses), the company grants anyone the right to use the patented technique without any obligations to the company. Otherwise we would see many cases of code released on liberal licenses, such as MIT, that no one is allowed to use, unless they pay for the patents sepa…

That's definitely not the case. Some licenses like Apache-2 explicitly grant you the use of necessary patents. Others do not. And there are projects which are absolutely covered by patents, yet the code is opensource. That was the situation with Gif and MP3 formats for years.

I was involved with an opensource project which got a patent application submitted by the company. Even though I pointed out prior art. And even though I refused to sign the application as one of the authors. That's corporate environment for you.

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