Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by rhinoceraptor » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #290

jaredklewis wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like people never get tired of not reading the PATENTS file. “Wildly aggressive?” Please. The agreement explicitly forbids Facebook from revoking your patent grant if they are the aggressor. Without the agreement (i.e. just BSD) Facebook is free to sue you for patent infringement. They add a file that says they can’t do that unless you sue them first and suddenly people are out for blood. Salem 2.0.

Only over the React patents. They could, however, sue you over your VR system or something but leave you little recourse due to not wanting to lose your React/other FB patent grants.

What React patents are there? And it seems to me that using Preact/Vue/etc would not be any better than using React if in fact there are patented technologies in React.

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

#472

Post by x0x0 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

sseppola wrote: post #445

dis-sys wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That link is also worth reading because the author is a lawyer; he claims the React patent clause is a paper tiger.

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

#473

Post by igl » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

My beef with software patents is bigger than my dislike of the Facebook institution. I think something like a weak patent clause would be nice for FOSS projects but it's not explored by many so far.

Interestingly more people seem blatently annoyed that their employer forbids them to use e.g. React and not about what the license actually means.

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

#474

Post by marenkay » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

... and that is the point, where it might be a good idea to consider not using software from Facebook any longer.

This whole patent/license circus is not really a decent advertisement. The original reasoning already wasn't.

The only proper solution to the whole drama is to end handing patents on software, as it pretty much is pointless.

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

#475

Post by ng12 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 9:38 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #469

madeofpalk wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right so even then, its a bit weird to say that 25% of sites decided to not go with React, but actually 25% of sites (unknowingly) use software that decided not to go with React.

You're splitting hairs to reduce the significance of WP's stance.

No, he's not. He's pointing out that calling it an "exodus" implies that many individual projects have decided to abandon React. In this context WordPress is just one project, not "25% of all websites".

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

#476

Post by coldtea » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #463

coldtea wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only some "core" for the software, not the full software, which is kept proprietary. And even that could hurt their business if somebody used the core to build their own app for the same target market on top of it.

I wouldn't say about what available on GitHub today, but up until year ago all source code was included and they only sold precompiled binaries and support. Also I doubt they can really change anything about that because Synergy never required CLA and it's under GPLv2. I pretty sure their "core" naming is just another way to promote usage of paid version, but you can still compile it yourself and easily remove all li…

Isn't that more proof that it doesn't work well though?

Why would they do all these changes if the previous model worked well for making them money?

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

#477

Post by newsmania » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #185

blaqkangel wrote: post #11

That was incredibly unexpected. Facebook may very well end up in the majority's good graces with this move. I wonder how some of the bigger players will react (no pun intended) after their abandonment of React in lieu of Vue or some other framework. Interesting times indeed.

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.

No way! Vue is way better than react. Ok, it depends on personal opinion, but I think it’s s much nicer framework to work with.

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

#478

Post by tzs » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

There have been a few comments on whether or not the MIT license includes an implicit patent license, or is just a copyright license.

It should be noted that there is nothing in the MIT license that actually says it is a copyright license. Here is what it grants you permission to do:

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions

It is giving you permission to "deal in the Software". What that means is not defined but it gives several examples that it includes: use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies.

Several of those, including use, copy, sell copies and maybe distribute, are things that require patent permission if the software is patented. The plain language of the license says that you have permission to do those things, and the only way you can have that permission is if you have a patent license, so I don't see how a court could read the license as not including a patent grant if the licensor has patents that cover it.

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

#479

Post by nilliams » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

nebabyte wrote: post #267

blaqkangel wrote: post #11

That was incredibly unexpected. Facebook may very well end up in the majority's good graces with this move. I wonder how some of the bigger players will react (no pun intended) after their abandonment of React in lieu of Vue or some other framework. Interesting times indeed.

> I wonder how some of the bigger players will react (no pun intended) after their abandonment of React in lieu of Vue or some other framework What do you expect them to do, shrug and come back? I doubt anyone who left based on concerns with their stack being owned by Facebook is likely to regret weaning themselves off of it.

The react ecosystem is massive, and includes impressive projects like the various backends/renderers: react-native, react-sketch.app, react-vr, react-pdf, ink, that have no equivalent in other frameworks (or at least to nowhere near the same level of maturity), so yeah people ditching it may well regret it.

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

#480

Post by mlsarecmg » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 10:10 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #449

mlsarecmg wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you say the statistics are inaccurate. They show a clear picture, actually the clearest we have, because if it weren't for actual usage stats we would have to rely on github stars, google trends and hear-say. Both react and vue release through the same channels, npm and cdns. Of course npm is the more important channel for modern environments and businesses. The point is that they both are subject to the same rules. The portion of users that like script tags use script tags with react as well. Those would fall out, but that happens on both fronts obviously.

The comment i made above, that most things going forward will happen in the react eco system, is supported by these statistics. If you have lots and lots of vue users that are still using script tags, and let us - without any data to confirm it - assume that there are less react users doing this, then that would speak volumes about the userbase at large, not the most forward leaning to say the least.