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Explaining React's license

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Re: Explaining React's license

#21

Post by pdfernhout »

votepaunchy wrote: post #18
Steeeve wrote: post #5

> We've been looking for ways around this and have reached out to ASF to see if we could try to work with them, but have come up empty. This, to me, is a significant warning sign. I was leery of the React license to begin with. But the community at large had _almost_ convinced me that it was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, Facebook's position as stated here is clearly that the license is weaponized for a reaso…

The fallback to BSD+Patents is simply BSD and should be evaluated by legal and corporate likewise.

No it is not, and that is what so many people misunderstand about this. Plain BSD has an implicit patent grant to the extent needed to run the software. An explicit patent license overrides that implicit grant. Of course, that interpretation is still subject to what the courts say in a lawsuit.

Of course, you are right that legal and corporate should review such a license. And for any company that deals in patents (or has customers who deal in patents), the likely answer is "no way".

Re: Explaining React's license

#22

Post by bpicolo »

kbenson wrote: post #10
bpicolo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without first re-writing the entire front-end to not use React Do note this isn't necessarily the case, because nobody has yet found a patent that covers React.

Doesn't that only help if we have a react clone to drop in place? That's not necessarily hard to do without patents, but does it exist? Edit: I think I see what you are saying. It says you lose the patent license, not necessarily the license for the software that doesn't have a patent, so doesn't do anything. Not sure how a judge would decide to interpret it though.

There are a whole bunch of react API alternatives out there. (Preact, inferno, etcetc)

Re: Explaining React's license

#23

Post by votepaunchy »

thesausageking wrote: post #17

> 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 additional Patents clause can simply be disregarded or, if not, then just file a patent lawsuit against Facebook. The plain BSD license does not offer a patent grant so there is no incompatibility.

The Apache Software License does grant a patent license [0] (as does GPLv3) so is incompatible with either of these BSD licenses (unless an 'implied' grant is assumed).

[0] http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0#patent

Re: Explaining React's license

#24

Post by jnbiche »

Steeeve wrote: post #5

> We've been looking for ways around this and have reached out to ASF to see if we could try to work with them, but have come up empty. This, to me, is a significant warning sign. I was leery of the React license to begin with. But the community at large had _almost_ convinced me that it was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, Facebook's position as stated here is clearly that the license is weaponized for a reaso…

I agree. Even if they're not necessarily up to something nefarious, this all seems quite odd.

Re: Explaining React's license

#25

Post by tbrock »

Isn't the style of programming react imposes (unidirectional data flow and component composition) the real innovation for front end applications here?

Sure the dom diffing technology was hot at the time it came out but it's basically is a commodity item at this point.

In that sense, the open source community can (and should) build multiple react clones that are licensed more liberally.

Sure, I'm annoyed by the licensing of React too, I think abou it a lot. But does it really matter that Facebook won't budge on this? The technology is out there whether it's React or not.

Re: Explaining React's license

#26

Post by abritinthebay »

Steeeve wrote: post #5

> We've been looking for ways around this and have reached out to ASF to see if we could try to work with them, but have come up empty. This, to me, is a significant warning sign. I was leery of the React license to begin with. But the community at large had _almost_ convinced me that it was nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, Facebook's position as stated here is clearly that the license is weaponized for a reaso…

That’s an impressive conclusion you’ve jumped to there, but there’s no evidence of it in the linked post or your comment.

That, to me, is also a significant warning sign.

Re: Explaining React's license

#27

Post by [deleted] »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #4

This is in reply to the Apache Software Foundation decision to list the BSD + Patents license as a Category-X license. - Facebook gets attacked by meritless patent litigation - Facebook creates the BSD + Patents license, which has the following effect : > The patent grant says that if you're going to use the software we've released under it, you lose the patent license from us if you sue us for patent infringement. -…

[deleted]

Re: Explaining React's license

#28

Post by rdtsc »

grizzles wrote: post #15

Facebook's position on this is weird. Any company that wants to use react and avoid liability arising from Facebook's terms can do so easily by incorporating a subsidiary or wholly separate company and paying that company $1 to license the UI built on react. Maybe this is about fencing off Google/Amazon/Alibaba/etc who might be reluctant to do something that would be technically legal but something that a jury might…

Or just use Vue or similar library

Re: Explaining React's license

#29

Post by votepaunchy »

pdfernhout wrote: post #21
votepaunchy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallback to BSD+Patents is simply BSD and should be evaluated by legal and corporate likewise.

No it is not, and that is what so many people misunderstand about this. Plain BSD has an implicit patent grant to the extent needed to run the software. An explicit patent license overrides that implicit grant. Of course, that interpretation is still subject to what the courts say in a lawsuit. Of course, you are right that legal and corporate should review such a license. And for any company that deals in patents (o…

That assumption of an 'implicit' grant is quite tenuous. You have taken it as invalidated by a PATENTS file, what if instead of a PATENTS file Facebook legal had blogged that they don't believe in an implicit grant? Does that nullify the grant of patents? What if stated by a project contributor?

That's the conundrum for any open source project and the exposed danger of the BSD license.

Re: Explaining React's license

#30

Post by votepaunchy »

jnbiche wrote: post #20
votepaunchy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallback to BSD+Patents is simply BSD and should be evaluated by legal and corporate likewise.

"Fallback"? Are you referring to Preact?

No. The PATENTS portion of BSD+Patents does not nullify the BSD License. So you are no worse off than had Facebook simply licensed the code under the BSD License.
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