Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

Post by irrational » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #326

irrational wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not irrational when your companies lawyers say that you many not use React due to the licensing, and there is a very real chance you will be terminated if you do. Unless you mean that lawyers are irrational, in which case I would agree (throwing in judges and politicians and anyone else in the legal profession while we are at it).

With the old patents license, you had to be the one to initiate patent litigation with Facebook. The odds of needing to and wanting to get into patent litigation with Facebook are way less than 1%. That's an irrational fear. If something has a 1:100,000 chance of impacting you...I dunno man, when it comes to startups I can think of 1000 other things more likely to affect you. Companies that didn't even have patents w…

Post by coldtea » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

arca_vorago wrote: post #324

jakobegger wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me more about commercial sales of GPL software. How could I make sure that people pay me for using my desktop app if it was GPL?

A common misconception is that under GPL all your code must be released to the public. This is not true. You only have to give code to the user after purchase. Now, it's true that the user could then upload your software to the public (under gpl), but many of the issues surrounding that (such as lost sales #) aren't as bad as people imagine they are, and in the foss world are generally made up for by high-maintainenc…

Post by coldtea » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #425

lemming wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of a commercially successful GPL desktop app?

Synergy [1] https://symless.com/synergy [2] https://github.com/symless/synergy-core

Post by rwmj » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #453

arca_vorago wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common misconception is that under GPL all your code must be released to the public. This is not true. You only have to give code to the user after purchase. Now, it's true that the user could then upload your software to the public (under gpl), but many of the issues surrounding that (such as lost sales #) aren't as bad as people imagine they are, and in the foss world are generally made up for by high-maintainenc…

> A common misconception is that under GPL all your code must be released to the public. This is not true. You only have to give code to the user after purchase. Now, it's true that the user could then upload your software to the public (under gpl), but many of the issues surrounding that (such as lost sales #) aren't as bad as people imagine they are Really?

Post by rhizome » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #328

rhizome wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The way I read it, Facebook essentially shirked the issue, regardless whether it's only a perception problem, onto companies like Wordpress. WP has their own users, it's not WP's job to do FB's work for them, and FB has to have known the patents clause was going to be problematic, or at least controversial.

React has been out for 4 years now. This hasn't been this big of a deal. But I guess at this point, React has hit critical mass, and it's sort of becoming a standard for front end development, so the FUD hit fever pitch.