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Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

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

#441

Post by baybal2 »

Bahamut wrote: post #334
arca_vorago wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to tell everyone licensing is more important than they realize, but there are so many people who fundamentally misunderstand licensing and therefor just don't care (dwtfyw license for example), or have falsely been trained by subpar instructors at uni and $othertraining about how bsd/mit is the superior license for business because $reasons. The four freedoms and free software solve so many of the pr…

Are you a lawyer? If not, you would be doing a disservice to anyone curious about the topic. My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.

Why you ask lawyers on a matter concerning computer programmers?

I have yet to see a single "professional IP lawyer" who knew more about GPL than an average IT pro. The was majority simply puts forwards claims without doing a minute of actual research on GPL

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

#442

Post by grzm »

baybal2 wrote: post #441
Bahamut wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a lawyer? If not, you would be doing a disservice to anyone curious about the topic. My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.

Why you ask lawyers on a matter concerning computer programmers? I have yet to see a single "professional IP lawyer" who knew more about GPL than an average IT pro. The was majority simply puts forwards claims without doing a minute of actual research on GPL

Licensing and patents are legal matters, and as such, one should consult a lawyer (to be sure, one knowledgeable in the domain) if it may impact one's business.

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

#443

Post by Bahamut »

grzm wrote: post #442
baybal2 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you ask lawyers on a matter concerning computer programmers? I have yet to see a single "professional IP lawyer" who knew more about GPL than an average IT pro. The was majority simply puts forwards claims without doing a minute of actual research on GPL

Licensing and patents are legal matters, and as such, one should consult a lawyer (to be sure, one knowledgeable in the domain) if it may impact one's business.

Not only that, there is legal precedent where just the act of software developers discussing IP matters has a negative effect in cases. It absolutely is a matter for lawyers, as the reason they are around is to guard against such pitfalls - it is their domain of expertise.

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

#444

Post by ethbro »

Sacho wrote: post #292
ethbro wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the issue not "if they come after you" but "if they pirate your tech without suing you"?

When you use the loaded term "pirate your tech", you mean "infringe your patents", right? The thing that the clause is trying to neutralize? This is why Facebook's move to neutralize patents failed - everyone's suddenly in love with their own patents, even if they agree that the system is broken. It was a good idea to scrap the clause to prevent the community from fracturing, but there's no triumph here - they failed…

If that was Facebook's intent, they could have worded their license in a more reciprocal way.

"We grant you a right to use all patents we have covering this work.

[1] If you sue us regarding a patent you claim covers this work, we revoke your right to use all patents we hold covering this work.

[2] If we sue you regarding an unrelated patent, you retain your right to use patents covering this work for purposes of this work.

[3] If you sue us regarding an unrelated patent, you retain your right to use patents covering this work for purposes of this work."

The entire point of people being annoyed about this is that Facebook specifically didn't include the [3] grant. Consequently, this was more about Facebook attempting to use React's popularity to make themselves immune to patent litigation (as anyone relying on React wouldn't have been able to sue Facebook for any patent without losing the React patents grants).

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

#445

Post by sseppola »

dis-sys wrote: post #424
Mayzie wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or what about Google's Golang PATENTS clause? https://golang.org/PATENTS

the one in Go basically says if you sue google for any Go related patents then they revoke the license. that patent retaliation clause is nothing different from the one used in Apache Licence Version 2. the one in react says they revoke your license when you sue facebook for any patent related matter.

Aslo called a "weak patent retaliation clause" vs React's (current) strong patent retaliation clause. I found the explanations in [1] to be very helpful to understand patent clauses.

[1]: https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok...

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

#446

Post by allover »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #380
LibertyBeta wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would stay with Vue. While the react world is bugger it's mostly made up of competing solutions instead of distinct tasks. That said, this healthy Vue/Angular/React competition has been great for us devs.

I agree that competition is generally good, but I hate choices so much. I don't even care if Vue is 10 times better than React, I've just spent the last year diving into React and React Native. I've finished 3 big projects and now I'm feeling more confident. And now I get the feeling that I have to throw out a whole bunch of experience and switch to the next big thing. I think I'm going to dig in my heels this time.…

I don't think anyone's really claiming that Vue is a 'next big thing' to switch to from React. Vue/React/Angular are all competitors of the same generation.

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

#447

Post by irrational »

discordianfish wrote: post #436
bachaco wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they?

Because facebook can sue them for violating their patents, now that they removed the patents grant.

But they switched the license to MIT. We use tons of software with that license and our lawyers are fine with it.

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

#448

Post by matt4077 »

Lazare wrote: post #310
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…

I think the story is this: 1. Software patents are a huge, huge, existential crisis facing our industry. 2. So huge, in fact, that nobody wants to deal with it. We can't realistically figure out if the libraries we are using are covered by patents, and given how broken issuance is, they probably are. 3. So the only practical solution is to use MIT licensed libraries, pretend there's no patent issue, and put our heads…

The sad thing is that Facebook's policy was obviously informed by exactly this point of view, that, essentially, software should not be patented.

It's the backlash that was led by people who considered it a realistic possibility that they may, some day, want to sue Facebook for infringing on one of their precious patents.

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

#449

Post by irrational »

mlsarecmg wrote: post #421
irrational wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we've already settled on Vue (because our lawyers forbade us from using React), but now I'm sure they would approve React. So... do we abandon our work on Vue (which so far is amazing) to switch to React since the React ecosystem is so large, or do we stay the course? Sigh. I wish Facebook had made this change a year ago.

Many things going forward will happen in reacts petri dish. Lots of ideas seeking to get consensus like the evolution of styles, animations, native performance, async scheduler, easy-to-create native renderers. Vue is nice and all, but it's rather complacent, catering to old Angular-like roots and web artefacts. If you believed the hype then Vue was supposed to be the be-all-end-all of frameworks, the reality of cour…

I don't understand the link. We don't get Vue from NPM. I assume others don't either. That implies to me that the numbers implied in that chart are inaccurate at best.

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

#450

Post by irrational »

kimar wrote: post #427
irrational wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we've already settled on Vue (because our lawyers forbade us from using React), but now I'm sure they would approve React. So... do we abandon our work on Vue (which so far is amazing) to switch to React since the React ecosystem is so large, or do we stay the course? Sigh. I wish Facebook had made this change a year ago.

Out of curiosity, what stage is your company at that your lawyer has an influence on your tech stack? Was this part of due diligence for fundraising?

Um, I work for a fortune 150 company. I'm not sure what stage that makes us, but we definitely don't do fundraising ;-)
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